Parallel Substructure Approach for Massively Parallel Computers

Abstract New massively parallel computer architectures have revolutionized the design of computer algorithms, and promise to have significant influence on algorithms for engineering computations. The traditional global model parallel method has a limited benefit for massively parallel computers. An alternative method is to use the substructure approach. This paper is to explore the potential for substructure strategy through actual examples. Each substructure is mapped on to some processors of a MIMD parallel computer. The internal nodes variables will be condensed into boundary nodes variables in each substructure. All substructures computations can be performed in parallel until the global boundary system equation is formed. A direct solution strategy for the global boundary displacements is performed. The final internal nodes displacements solution in each substructure can be performed in parallel. Examples for two-dimensional static analysis are presented on a BBN Butterfly GP1000 parallel computer.