Abstract
Current progress in parallel algorithm research and applications in vehicle crash simulation is described for the explicit, finite-element algorithms in DYNA3D. Two challenging algorithm research problems are addressed: problem partitioning methods and parallel algorithms for contact at material interfaces. Two prototype parallel contact algorithms have been developed for treating the cases of local and arbitrary contact. Demonstration problems for local contact are crashworthiness simulations with 22 locally defined contact surfaces and a vehicle-barrier collision modeled with arbitrary contact. A simulation of crash tests conducted for a vehicle striking a U-channel small signpost embedded in soil has been run on both the serial and parallel versions of DYNA3D. A significant reduction in computational time has been observed when running these problems on the parallel version. However, to achieve maximum efficiency, complex problems must be appropriately partitioned, especially when contact dominates the computation.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.