A comprehensive solution of solidification/melting processes requires the
simultaneous representation of free surface fluid flow, heat transfer, phase change,
nonlinear solid mechanics and, possibly, electromagnetics together with their
interactions, in what is now known as multiphysics simulation. Such simulations are
computationally intensive and the implementation of solution strategies for
multiphysics calculations must embed their effective parallelization. For some
years, together with our collaborators, we have been involved in the development of
numerical software tools for multiphysics modeling on parallel cluster systems. This
research has involved a combination of algorithmic procedures, parallel strategies
and tools, plus the design of a computational modeling software environment and its
deployment in a range of real world applications. One output from this research is
the three-dimensional parallel multiphysics code, PHYSICA. In this paper we report
on an assessment of its parallel scalability on a range of increasingly complex
models drawn from actual industrial problems, on three contemporary parallel cluster systems.
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