Parallel adaptive mesh generation and decomposition

An important class of methodologies for the parallel processing of computational models defined on some discrete geometric data structures (i.e. meshes, grids) is the so calledgeometry decomposition or splitting approach. Compared to the sequential processing of such models, the geometry splitting parallel methodology requires an additional computational phase. It consists of the decomposition of the associated geometric data structure into a number of balancedsubdomains that satisfy a number of conditions that ensure the load balancing and minimum communication requirement of the underlying computations on a parallel hardware platform. It is well known that the implementation of the mesh decomposition phase requires the solution of a computationally intensive problem. For this reason several fast heuristics have been proposed. In this paper we explore a decomposition approach which is part of a parallel adaptive finite element mesh procedure. The proposed integrated approach consists of five steps. It starts with a coarse background mesh that isoptimally decomposed by applying well known heuristics. Then, the initial mesh is refined in each subdomain after linking the new boundaries introduced by its decomposition. Finally, the decomposition of the new refined mesh is improved so that it satisfies the objectives and conditions of the mesh decomposition problem. Extensive experimentation indicates the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed parallel mesh and decomposition approach.