Parallel Automatic Adaptive Analysis

Consideration is given to the techniques required to support adaptive analysis of automatically generated unstructured meshes on distributed memory MIMD parallel computers. Emphasis is placed on the structures needed to support effective parallel computations when the numerical discretization, the mesh, is defined and evolves during the computation. The key base structures are a distributed mesh based on a topological hierarchy, and a parallel distributed octree. Parallel control of the mesh and octree structures is done through a set of partition communication operations and entity migration routines. Load balance is maintained through iterative load balance, or distributed repartitioning. Building on these structures, procedures to automatically generate and adaptively refine meshes in parallel, starting from CAD geometric models, are given. Finally, the combination of these techniques to produce a parallel automated analysis procedure is demonstrated. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.