Acceleration of a 2D/3D finite-discrete element code for geomechanical simulations using General Purpose GPU computing

Abstract This paper presents a novel implementation of a hydro-mechanically coupled, finite-discrete element method (FDEM) optimized to exploit the computing parallelism of graphics processing units (GPUs). A co-processing approach is adopted with the control loop of FDEM executed serially on the CPU and compute-intensive tasks off-loaded to the GPU. A benchmarking study indicates speedups of up to 100 × compared to sequential CPU execution. The implementation is validated by comparing 3D laboratory-scale rock fracturing simulations with experimental results. The effectiveness of the approach for practical rock engineering applications is demonstrated through the back analysis of a slope in a fractured rock mass.