Towards Scalable Parallel Simulation of the Structural Mechanics of Piezoelectric-Controlled Beams

• Main Author: Rotter, Jeremy Michael
• Other Authors: Computer Science
• Format: Others
• Published: Virginia Tech 2014
• Subjects: scalable; distributed memory; parallel computation; finite elements; piezoelectric
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/33875; http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-070299-151321/

In this thesis we present a parallel implementation of an engineering code which simulates the deformations caused when forces are applied to a piezoelectric-co ntrolled smart structure. The parallel simulation, whose domain decomposition r elies on the finite element representation of the structure, is created with an emphasis on scalability of both memory requirements and run time. We take into consideration sequential performance enhancements, the structure of a banded sym metric positive definite linear system, and the overhead required to completely distribute the problem across the processors. The resulting code is scalable, w ith the exception of a banded Cholesky factorization, which does not fully utili ze the parallel environment. === Master of Science