Application of thread-level parallel programming to thermohydrodynamic lubrication computation

This study presents a performance evaluation of a portable parallel programming paradigm, the OpenMP, for thermohydrodynamic (THD) lubrication analysis. The THD model is described by two coupled partial differential equations, a simplified generalized Reynolds equation and a 3-D time-dependent energy equation. The numerical methods used for solving these equations are coded and compiled as a multithread application to minimize execution time in a dual-CPU workstation. It was found that the program coded in thread-level parallelism can effectively use the computing resources in the current setup. The attributes of conditional compilation and incremental parallelization of OpenMP make it a powerful tool for fine-grain applications in shared-memory platforms. A program coded in thread-level parallelism should understand the caching operation to fully exploit the capacity of coming dual- or multi-core desktop CPUs in either uniprocessor or multiprocessor systems. As illustrated in this study, some of the parallel programming techniques used in solving the Reynolds equation and the thermal energy equation can facilitate applications using similar lubrication models.