A networked client–server environment with CORBA interface for parallel FE analysis

The paper describes the development of a powerful high performance finite element computing framework in a network of small computers. A basic object-oriented general purpose FE analysis code with a frontal solver has been developed in C++. CORBA has been used as a platform for objects deployment as a network in a client–server environment. As mentioned earlier, the server has been developed in C++ while both Java and C++ clients have been used. Different cases viz. (i) simple client/server model and (ii) multiple concurrent servers with a Java client model have been developed and validated. The distributed network environment has been utilized for parallelizing the finite element analysis. This has presently been implemented over a cluster of Intel workstations connected through a switch, thereby offering a very economical solution for the solution of large problems. Sub-structuring and use of superelements have been employed for this parallelization. Each sub-server is responsible for the assembly of elements, computation of superelement stiffness, communication with central server and the computation of low-level solution. Some initial results on performance are also reported.