Parallel adaptive finite element package with dynamic load balancing for 3D thermo-mechanical problems

Abstract

Numerical modeling of 3D thermomechanical problems is a complex and time-consuming issue. Adaptive techniques are powerful tools to perform efficiently such modeling using the FEM analysis. During the adaptation computational workloads change unpredictably at the runtime, therefore dynamic load balancing is required. This paper presents new developments in the parallel FEM package NuscaS; they allow for extending its functionality and increasing performance. In particular, by including dynamic load balancing capabilities, this package allows us to solve efficiently adaptive FEM problems with 3D unstructured meshes on distributed-memory parallel computers such as PC-clusters. For solving sparse systems of equations, NuscaS uses the message-passing paradigm to implement the PCG iterative method with geometric multigrid as a preconditioner. The implementation of load balancing is based on the proposed performance model. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.