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This paper gives a bibliographical review of the finite element and boundary element parallel processing techniques from the theoretical and application points of view. Topics include: theory – domain decomposition/partitioning, load balancing, parallel solvers/algorithms, parallel mesh generation, adaptive methods, and visualization/graphics; applications – structural mechanics problems, dynamic problems, material/geometrical non‐linear problems, contact problems, fracture mechanics, field problems, coupled problems, sensitivity and optimization, and other problems; hardware and software environments – hardware environments, programming techniques, and software development and presentations. The bibliography at the end of this paper contains 850 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with presented subjects that were published between 1996 and 2002.

Balancing and dual domain decomposition methods (DDMs) comprise a family of efficient high performance solution approaches for a large number of problems in computational mechanics. Such DDMs are used in practice on parallel computing environments with the number of generated subdomains being generally larger than the number of available processors. This paper presents an effective heuristic technique for organizing the subdomains into subdomain clusters, in order to assign each cluster to a processor. This task is handled by the proposed approach as a graph partitioning optimization problem using the publicly available software METIS. The objective of the optimization process is to minimize the communication requirements of the DDMs under the constraint of producing balanced processor workloads. This constraint optimization procedure for treating the subdomain cluster generation task leads to increased computational efficiencies for balancing and dual DDMs.

An algorithm for domain partitioning with iterative load balancing is presented. A recursive graph labeling scheme is used to distribute elements among subdomains at each iteration. Both graph distance information and information about neighbor vertices are employed during the labeling process. Element quantities for balanced subdomains are predicted, solving the algebraic load balancing problem after each iteration. The same graph labeling scheme with slight modifications is applied to node renumbering inside subdomains. The proposed algorithm is especially suitable for load balancing when a direct method is used for subdomain condensation and the evaluation of cost function is time consuming. Several examples of optimized partitioning of irregular and regular meshes show that load balancing can be achieved with one to three iterations.

Additive manufacturing based on arc welding is a fast and effective way to fabricate complex and irregular metal workpieces. Thin-wall metal structures are widely used in the industry. However, it is difficult to realize support-free freeform thin-wall structures. This paper aims to propose a new method of non-supporting thin-wall structure (NSTWS) manufacturing by gas metal arc welding (GMAW) with the help of a multi-degree of freedom robot arm.

This study uses the geodesic distance on the triangular mesh to build a scalar field, and then the equidistant iso-polylines are obtained, which are used as welding paths for thin-wall structures. Focusing on the possible problems of interference and the violent variation of the printing directions, this paper proposes two types of methods to partition the model mesh and generate new printable iso-polylines on the split meshes.

It is found that irregular thin-wall models such as an elbow, a vase or a transition structure can be deposited without any support and with a good surface quality after applying the methods.

The experiments producing irregular models illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the methods to fabricate NSTWSs, which could provide guidance to some industrial applications.

During the industrial design process, a product is usually modified and analyzed repeatedly until reaching the final design. Modifying the model and regenerating a mesh for every update during this process is very time consuming. To improve efficiency, it is necessary to circumvent the computer-aided design modeling stage when possible and directly modify the meshes to save valuable time. The purpose of this paper is to develop a method for mesh modifications.

In contrast to existing studies, which focus on one or a class of modifications, this paper comprehensively studies mesh union, mesh gluing, mesh cutting and mesh partitioning. To improve the efficiency of the method, the paper presents a fast and effective surface mesh remeshing algorithm based on a ball-packing method and controls the remeshing regions with a size field.

Examples and results show that the proposed mesh modification method is efficient and effective. The proposed method can be also applied to meshes with different material properties, which is very different with previous work that is only suitable for the meshes with same material property.

This paper proposes an efficient and comprehensive tetrahedral mesh modification method, through which engineers can directly modify meshes instead of models and save time.

A general philosophy is presented in which all the modules within the computational cycle are parallelised and executed on parallel computer hardware, thereby avoiding the creation of computational bottlenecks. In particular, unstructured mesh generation with adaptation, computational fluid dynamics and computational electromagnetic solvers and the visualisation of grid and solution data are all performed in parallel. In addition, all these modules are embedded within a parallel problem solving environment. This paper will provide an overview of these developments. In particular, details of the parallel mesh generator, which has been used to generate meshes in excess of 100 million elements, will be given. A brief overview will be presented of the approach used to parallelise the solvers and how large data sets are interrogated and visualised on distributed computer platforms. Details of the parallel adaptation algorithm will be presented. These parallel component modules are linked using CORBA communication to provide an integrated parallel approach for large scale simulations. Several examples are given of the approach applied to the simulation of large aerospace calculations in the field of aerodynamics and electromagnetics.

This paper aims to develop a parallel fast neighbor search method and communication strategy for particle-based methods with adaptive smoothing-length on distributed-memory computing systems.

With a multi-resolution-based hierarchical data structure, the parallel neighbor search method is developed to detect and construct ghost buffer particles, i.e. neighboring particles on remote processor nodes. To migrate ghost buffer particles among processor nodes, an undirected graph is established to characterize the sparse data communication relation and is dynamically recomposed. By the introduction of an edge coloring algorithm from graph theory, the complex sparse data exchange can be accomplished within optimized frequency. For each communication substep, only efficient nonblocking point-to-point communication is involved.

Two demonstration scenarios are considered: fluid dynamics based on smoothed-particle hydrodynamics with adaptive smoothing-length and a recently proposed physics-motivated partitioning method [Fu et al., JCP 341 (2017): 447-473]. Several new concepts are introduced to recast the partitioning method into a parallel version. A set of numerical experiments is conducted to demonstrate the performance and potential of the proposed parallel algorithms.

The proposed methods are simple to implement in large-scale parallel environment and can handle particle simulations with arbitrarily varying smoothing-lengths. The implemented smoothed-particle hydrodynamics solver has good parallel performance, suggesting the potential for other scientific applications.

Describes a new finite element scheme for the large‐scale analysis of compressible and incompressible viscous flows. The scheme is based on a combined compressible‐ incompressible Galerkin least‐squares (GLS) space‐time variational formulation. Three‐ dimensional unstructured meshes are employed, with piecewise‐constant temporal interpolation, local time‐stepping for steady flows, and linear continuous spatial interpolation in all the variables. The scheme incorporates automatic adaptive mesh refinement, with a choice of various error indicators. It is implemented on a distributed‐memory parallel computer, and includes an automatic load‐balancing procedure. Demonstrates the ability to solve both compressible and incompressible viscous flow problems using the parallel adaptive framework via numerical examples. These include Mach 3 flow over a flat plate, and a divergence‐free buoyancy‐driven flow in a cavity. The latter is a model for the steady melt flow in a Czochralski crystal growth process.

Gives a bibliographical review of the finite element meshing and remeshing from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. Topics such as adaptive techniques for meshing and remeshing, parallel processing in the finite element modelling, etc. are also included. The bibliography at the end of this paper contains 1,727 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with presented subjects that were published between 1990 and 2001.

This paper describes a parallel algorithm for the dynamic relaxation (DR) method. The basic theory of the dynamic relaxation is briefly reviewed to prepare the reader for the parallel implementation of the algorithm. Some fundamental parallel processing schemes have been explored for the implementation of the algorithm. Geometric Parallelism was found suitable for the DR method when using transputer‐based systems. The evolution of the parallel algorithm is given by identifying the steps which may be executed in parallel. The structure of the parallel code is discussed and then described algorithmically. Two geometrically non‐linear parallel finite element analyses have been performed using different mesh densities. The number of processors was varied to investigate algorithm efficiency and speed ups. Using the results obtained it is shown that the computational efficiency increases when the computational load per processor is increased.