Performance Issues of the Parallel Pam-Crash Code

The successful completion of the ESPRIT project CAMAS (EP 6756) and its extension to provide a link to the EURO PORT-1 action (EP 8421) (Mierendorff et al., 1995), together with further internal developments, has resulted in the availability of a portable message-passing version of the industrial crashworthiness program PAM-CRASH. This provides code users with an increased range of employment possibilities: effective use of resources through workstation networks, distributed-memory ma chines on which message passing is a necessity, and improved throughput on shared-memory or hybrid sys tems. With crash and safety analysis well established in the automotive design process, the availability of parallel application software enables the take-up of HPC technol ogy to the benefit of industrial design. In this paper, we illustrate the degree of scalability obtained for typical in dustrial applications and the challenges encountered on today's parallel machines.