A universal parallel simulation framework for energy pipeline networks on high-performance computers

Abstract Energy distribution networks represent crucial infrastructures for modern society, and various simulation tools have been widely used by energy suppliers to manage these intricate networks. However, simulation calculations include a large number of fluid control equations, and computational overhead limits the performance of simulation software. This paper proposes a universal parallel simulation framework for energy pipeline networks that takes advantages of data parallelism and computational independence between network elements. A non-pipe model of an energy supply network is optimized, and the input and output of the network model in the proposed framework are modified, which can reduce the development burden during the numerical computations of the pipeline network and weaken the computational correlation between different simulated components. In addition, independent computations can be performed concurrently through periodic data exchange procedures between component instances, improving the parallelism and efficiency of simulation computations. Further, a parallel water pipelines network simulation computing paradigm based on a heterogeneous computer hardware architecture is used to evaluate the proposed framework’s performance. A series of tests are conducted to verify the accuracy of the proposed framework, and simulation errors of less than 5% are achieved. The results of multi-threaded simulation experiments have demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed framework in a parallel computing approach. Moreover, an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Deep Computing Unit (DCU)-parallel program is implemented into a water supply network simulation system; the computational efficiency of this system is compared with that of its serial counterpart. The experimental results show that the proposed framework is appropriate for high-performance computer architectures, and the 18x speed-up ratio demonstrates that the parallel program based on the proposed universal framework outperforms the serial program. That provides the basis for the application of pipe network simulation on high-performance computers.