Hybrid parallel approach to homogenization of transport processes in masonry

Abstract Numerical simulations of transport processes, e.g., heat and moisture transport, in heterogeneous masonry structures performed on single processor computers are very time consuming. The classical description by the finite element method leads to enormous numbers of degrees of freedom. It is caused by the fact that there are relatively thin layers of mortar in contrary to large bricks or stones. The mortar and stones have very different material parameters and the finite element mesh has to be able to describe the temperature and moisture fields in the thin layers of mortar and in their vicinity. An application of a multi-scale approach in connection with parallel computing can be successfully exploited. The whole structure is described by a reasonably coarse finite element mesh, called the macro-scale problem, and the material parameters are obtained from the lower-level problems, called the meso-scale problem, by a homogenization procedure. In this procedure, the macro-problem is assigned to the master processor and the meso-scale problems belong to the slave processors. This proposed approach is called hybrid parallel method.