A Parallel Solution Method for Structural Dynamic Response Analysis

With the continuous improvements of technology in and around multi-core CPU:s and GPU:s there is a strong desire to exploit this technology in its full potential. For structural dynamics problems, the domain decomposition is a very mature technique that is well adapted to parallel computations in multi-core machines as it is almost trivially parallelizable. However, competing alternatives with model reduction without parallel computation has also reached an extremely high level of maturity and are thus highly competitive. In this paper, a domain decomposition method, in a procedure named the split-stitch-spread (S3) procedure, is proposed to do transient analysis of large finite element models in parallel. In the method, the structure splits into model substructures with elastic interfacial substructures coupling them together. Each of them can be sent to different computer cores to do time discretization. The model substructures stitch to each other by using interfacial forces and as a result, the systems’ state sequence will be obtained. The solution can then be spread into the substructures and response quantities can be evaluated in parallel processing. The method is applied to a multi-story building subjected to earthquake loading and the results are compared with mode displacement method as a model reduction method with focus on computational efficiency