Abstract
This paper describes a parallel explicit finite element analysis system for dynamic problems based on the hierarchical domain decomposition. Here a whole mesh of analysis domain is first decomposed into several large domains called Parts, each of which is again decomposed into a number of smaller subdomains. The proposed parallel finite element analysis is performed on three layer processors : one GrandController, several Controllers and a number of Analyzers. Finite element analyses of subdomains are performed on the Analyzers, then the analysis results of the inter-subdomain DOFs are collected to the Controllers, and finally those of inter-Part DOFs are collected to the GrandController. The present method shows good scalability because of its reduced and distributed inter-processor communications. Parallel performances are tested through elastic wave propagation analyses on two typical parallel processing environments, i.e. a PC cluster and a massively parallel computer.
