Summary
Numerical analysis of thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) coupled problems leads to an extremely high computational expense. This work is devoted to reduce such computational expense by parallel computing methods. To this purpose, parallelization is applied to the most time consuming portions of finite element simulations, i.e. assembly of linear equation systems (LES) and solving them. Since an iterative solver is adopted in the present study, the sub-structuring technique of domain decomposition plays an important role in both assembly and solving of LES. Three principles of the parallelization procedure are: (1) all processes of a coupled problem share a unique finite element mesh; (2) this mesh is discretized into sub-domains, each of them are established with mesh topology for both linear and quadratic interpolation, the assembly of linear equation systems is performed in sub-domains and is distributed to the involved processors (CPU-nodes); (3) matrix-vector multiplications, which are the basic computational operations in an iterative solver, are split to sub-domain level and are also performed by the involved processors concurrently. The parallel FEM is applied successfully to the solution of a THM coupled problem in partially saturated bentonite which are used as buffer material in geotechnical sealings.
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Wang, W., Adamidis, P., Hess, M., Kemmler, D., Kolditz, O. (2007). Parallel Finite Element Analysis of THM Coupled Processes in Unsaturated Porous Media. In: Schanz, T. (eds) Theoretical and Numerical Unsaturated Soil Mechanics. Springer Proceedings in Physics 113, vol 113. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-69876-0_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-69876-0_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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