A distributed parallel multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann method on general-purpose graphics processing units for the rapid and scalable computation of absolute permeability from high-resolution 3D micro-CT images

Digital rock physics (DRP) is a rapidly evolving technology targeting fast turnaround times for repeatable core analysis and multi-physics simulation of rock properties. We develop and validate a rapid and scalable distributed-parallel single-phase pore-scale flow simulator for permeability estimation on real 3D pore-scale micro-CT images using a novel variant of the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). The LBM code implementation is designed to take maximum advantage of distributed computing on multiple general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs). We describe and extensively test the distributed parallel implementation of an innovative LBM algorithm for simulating flow in pore-scale media based on the multiple-relaxation-time (MRT) model that utilizes a precise treatment of body force. While the individual components of the resulting simulator can be separately found in various references, our novel contributions are (1) the integration of all of the mathematical and high-performance computing components together with a highly optimized code implementation and (2) the delivery of quantitative results with the simulator in terms of robustness, accuracy, and computational efficiency for a variety of flow geometries including various types of real rock images. We report on extensive validations of the simulator in terms of accuracy and provide near-ideal distributed parallel scalability results on large pore-scale image volumes that were largely computationally inaccessible prior to our implementation. We validate the accuracy of the MRT-LBM simulator on model geometries with analytical solutions. Permeability estimation results are then provided on large 3D binary microstructures including a sphere pack and rocks from various sandstone and carbonate formations. We quantify the scalability behavior of the distributed parallel implementation of MRT-LBM as a function of model type/size and the number of utilized GPGPUs for a panoply of permeability estimation problems.