A Parallel FEA Computing Kernel for Building Structures

doi:10.4236/jamp.2013.16006

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Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics, 2013, 1, 26-30

Published Online November 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jamp)

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jamp.2013.16006

Open Access JAMP

A Parallel FEA Computing Kernel for Building Structures

Jin Duan, Yungui Li, Xiao ming Ch en, Hu Qi, Jianyun Sun

China State Construction Technical Center, Beijing, China

Email: [email protected], duanjin78@qq.com

Received August 2013

ABSTRACT

With the rapid development of high-rise buildings and long -span structures in the recent years, high performance com-

putation (HPC) is becoming more and more important, sometimes even crucial, for the design and construction of com-

plex building structures. To satisfy the engineering requirements of HPC, a parallel FEA computing kernel, which is

designed typically for the analysis of complex building structures, will be presented and illustrated in this paper. This

kernel program is based on the Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL) and coded by FORTRAN 2008 syntax, which is a

parallel computer language. To improve the capability and efficiency of the computing kernel program, the parallel

concepts of modern FORTRAN, such as elemental procedure, do concurrent, etc., have been applied extensively in

coding and the famous PARDISO solver in MKL has been called to solve the Large-sparse system of linear equations.

The ultimate objective of d eveloping the computing kernel is to make the personal computer have the ability to analysis

large building structures up to ten million degre e of freedoms (DOFs). Up to now, the linear static analysis an d dynamic

analysis have been achieved while the nonlinear analysis, including geometric and material nonlinearity, has not been

finished yet. Therefore, the numerical examples in this paper will be concentrated on demonstrating the validity and

efficiency of the linear analysis and modal analysis for large FE models, while igno ring the verif ication of the nonlinear

analysis capabilities.

Keywords: High Performance Computing; Finite Element Analysis; Building Structure; PARDISO

1. Introduction

With the rapid development of high-rise buildings and

long-span structures in the recent years, high perfor-

mance computation (HPC) is becoming more and more

important, sometimes even crucial, for the structure de-

sign and building construction.

The traditional design softwares, such as PKPM,

ETABS, MIDAS, YJK and so on, can’t match the ad-

vanced requirements of HPC. On the other hand, the

large scale general finite element analysis (FEA) soft-

wares, such as ABAQUS, ANSYS, ADINA, etc., al-

though have the powerful computational abilities, but

they can’t be applied directly to the architectural struc-

ture analysis and design, due to the fact that their pre-

processors are inconvenient for building modeling and

their postprocessors can’t present computational results

according to the building codes in civil engineering.

To satisfy the engineering requirements for HPC, an

integrated simulation system for building structures has

been designed by the authors. This system, which is a

coalition of some secondary software developments toge-

ther with the traditional design softwares and general

FEA softwares, will provide high performance computa-

tion, simulation and technical supports for the design and

construction of the large and complex buildings.

To achieve the above objectives, there are many im-

portant technical indicators to be considered seriously,

typically the following aspects: 1) data transformation

from the structural model to FEA model; 2) parallel FEA

computing kernel developed specially for the building

structures and serving as the supplements to the general

FEA software s.

In this paper, the above mentioned computing kernel

will be presented and discussed using some numerical

examples. This FEA computing program is based on the

Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL) and coded by FOR-

TRAN 2008 syntax, a parallel computer language. To

improve its capability and efficiency, the parallel con-

cepts of modern FORTRAN, such as elemental proce-

dure, do concurrent, etc., have been applied extensively

in coding. And furthermore, the famous PARDISO solv-

er in MKL will be called to solve the Large-sparse sys-

tem of linear equations.

2. Parallel Syntax in Modern Fortran [1,2]

The modern FORTRAN, i.e. FORTRAN2003/2008, has

J. DUAN ET AL.

Open Access JAMP

been designed for parallel processing.

2.1. Elemental Procedure

Elemental procedures are written with all scalar dummy

arguments. When called with array actual arguments, the

compiler will automatically call the procedure for each

array element. A typical example is presented in the Fig-

ures 1 and 2.

2.2. Do Concurrent

The do concurrent statement is an explicit way to indi-

cate that a specific doloop may have its iterations per-

formed in parallel. In th is sense, it is a simplified version

of the OpenMP parallel do directive that indicates the

same task. It is the most appropriate for shared memory

systems when enhancing existing doloops, when array

syntax would cause the creation of temporary arrays, or

as a replacement for all constructs. Here is an example of

the do concurrent construct, shown in Figure 3.

2.3. Coarray

Coarray, maybe is abbreviated from “concurrent array”,

is a new feature that Fortran 2008 introduces. The coar-

ray extension adopts the Single Program Multiple Data

(SPMD) programming model, i.e., a single program is

replicated into multiple “images”. Animage can be thought

Figure 1. Definition of elemental procedure.

Figure 2. Calling of elemental procedure.

of as what we have referred up to now as a process envi-

ronment (PE). Coarray can be thought of as a simplified

and integrated al ternative to MPI. The coarray model sup -

ports both shared memory and distributed memory hard-

ware. Figure 4 presents a typical application of coarray.

3. Pardiso Solver

Solving linear systems of equations lies at the heart of

many problems in computational science and engineering,

particularly in finite ele ment analysis (FEA), because the

FEA system is often very large and the associated matrix

A is sparse. Among the currently-available software

packages for the direct solution of sparse linear systems

of equations, PARDISO (Parallel Sparse Direct Solver),

coded by O. SchenkandK. Gartner [3,4] with fortran and

c, maybe the most popular one, partly because it has been

integrated into the math kernel library (MKL) of Intel

Parallel Studio.

The PARDISO package is a high-performance, robust,

memory-efficient and easy to use software for solving

large sparse symmetric and non-symmetric linear sys-

tems of equations. Its most remarkable characteristic is

parallel computing, not only for the shared-memory ar-

chitectures but also for the distributed-memory architec-

tures.

4. Numerical Examples

Because the nonlinear analysis, including geometric and

material nonlinearity, has not been finished yet by now,

the numerical examples in the follow → following will

be concentrated on demonstrating the validity and effi-

ciency of the linear analysis and modal analysis forlarge-

scale FE models, while ignoring the nonlinear analysis

Call i ng pure pr o c e du r e

Figure 3. Illustration of do concurrent.

Figure 4. Illustration of coarray.

J. DUAN ET AL.

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capabilities.

4.1. Static Analysis of a Cubesubjected to

Gravity Load

Figure 5 shows a cubic model subjected to gravity load

and with bottom fixed. The comparing of the static anal-

ysis results with ANSYS software and the computing

program of this paper has been illustrated in Table 1 and

Figure 6. Obviously, the results are in good agreement

with eac h other.

To verify the validity and efficiency of this computing

program furthermore, Table 2 gives the displacement

results of the cube with different mesh size. It can be

observed that the displacement results will increase

slightly with the mesh size decrease → decreases, and

finally arrive at the convergence state. This phenomenon

is in accordance with the FEA theory.

4.2. Natural Frequency Analysis of a Multitower

Building

Figure 7 shows a multi-tower building. The natural fre-

quency computed by SATWE software and the pro-

gram in this paper has been shown in Tables 3 and 4 and

Figure 8. Obviously, the results are very close, with

Length of side:10 0;

Density:7800;E:5.75e8;V: 0.3;

Loaded by gravity;Fixed bottom

Figure 5. Cubic model.

Table 1. Results compared with ANSYS.

ANSYS This paper Error

Mesh

50*50*50

Dofs (million) 0.4 0.4 --

Time (m) 3 1.5 --

Max_Uz 0.65398 0.65376 0.03%

Max_Ux 0.13075 0.13061 0.11%

Max_Uy 0.13075 0.13061 0.11%

(a)

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(b)

Figure 6. (a) Displacement-contour plot of ANSYS; (b) Displacement-contour plot of this paper.

Table 2. Results of t he c ube with different mesh size.

mesh Dof (Million) Time (minutes) Max_Uz

50*50*50 0.4 1.5 0.65376

60*60*60 0.7 4 0.65386

70*70*70 1.1 15 0.65392

80*80*80 1.6 30 0.65397

90*90*90 2.2 70 0.65400

100*100*100 3.1 130 0.65403

Figure 7. Multi-tow er building.

Table 3. Computing scale and time compared with SATWE.

SATWE This paper

Mesh size (m) 1.5 1.5

Slab model Rigid Elastic

Dofs (million) 0.6 1.5

Dynamic dofs 690 500,000

Time (m) 10 10

Table 4. Results compared with SATWE.

SATWE This paper Error

Freq (Hz)

1st, 30th

0.26 0.24 7.7%

1.79 1.65 7.8%

Effective mass coefficient 0.60 (x) 0.61 (x) 1.7%

0.62 (y) 0.63 (y) 1.6%

05 10 15 20 25 30

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

2.0

Freq (Hz)

No. of freq

this paper(elastic slab)

Satwe(rigid slab)

05 10 15 2025 30

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

2.0

Freq (Hz)

No. of freq

this paper(elastic slab)

Satwe(rigid slab)

Figure 8. Natural frequency.

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Open Access JAMP

the maximum error 7% - 8% approximately, which may-

be resulted from the following reasons: 1) the FE DOFs

scale of this model has exceeded the capacity of SATWE

software, so the rigid slab hypothesis is introduced to

decrease the DOFs scale of SATWE; 2) the SATWE

software has introduced penalty function to simulate the

restraints between the beams an d walls, which is ignored

in the program of this paper; 3) the lumped-mass models

for the SATWE software and the present program are not

identical, because the SATWE software has the mass of

components, e.g. walls, beams, columns, braces etc.,

lumped at the top of itself.

For the multi-tower building shown in Figure 7, if th e

mesh size is set to 1.5 m, the DOFs sca le will be 1.6 mil-

lion; if the mesh size is set to a smaller one, the DOFs

scale will get much larger; when the mesh size decreases

to 0.5 m, the DOFs scale will increase to 11 million. The

modal analysis results with the above different mesh size

by the present program has been shown in the Table 5

and Figures 9 and 10. Observing the results, it can be

easily concluded that the natural frequencies will de-

crease with the mesh size decreasing and finally arrive at

a convergence state. This conclusion is exactly coinci-

dent with FEA theory.

Table 5. Results f or the building with different me sh si ze.

Mesh

Size(m)

Dofs

(million)

Time

(minutes)

Freq(Hz)

, 30

)

1.5 1.6 3.5 0.2364 1.6316

1.2 2 4.5 0.2321 1.5926

1.0 3.1 6.0 0.2256 1.5409

0.8 4.7 55 0.2200 1.4800

0.5 11 90 0.2156 1.4375

05 10 15 20 25 30

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

Freq (Hz)

no. of freq

Freq with different mesh size

0.5m,11 million dofs

0.8m,4.7 million dofs

1.0m,3.1 million dofs

1.2m,2 million dofs

1.5m,1.6 million dofs

05 10 15 2025 30

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

Freq (Hz)

no. of freq

Freq with different mesh size

0.5m,11 million dofs

0.8m,4.7 million dofs

1.0m,3.1 million dofs

1.2m,2 million dofs

1.5m,1.6 million dofs

Figure 9. Frequency with different mesh size.

05 10 15 20 25 30

1. 0m

1. 5m

1. 2m

0.8m0.8m

F req e rro r (%)

No. of freq

Freq error with different mesh size

0.5m ( reference value)

05 10 15 2025 30

1. 0m

1. 5m

1. 2m

0.8m0.8m

F req e rro r (%)

No. of freq

Freq error with different mesh size

0.5m ( reference value)

Figure 10. Frequency-error with different mesh size.

5. Conclusion

All the test work of this paper is on a personal computer

of the author. The main hardware parameters are as fol-

lows: 4-processor CPU with 3.1 GHz, 16 G RAM,

WIN7-x64 OS. Therefore, it can be concluded at least

partially that the FEA computing kernel presented in this

paper has the ability to analysis large building structures

up to ten million DOFs, using personal computer instead

of workstation.

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