LITHOSPHERE DYNAMICS MODELING ON MULTI-PROCESSOR COMPUTER SYSTEM

V.L. Gasilov
VANT. Ser.: Mat. Mod. Fiz. Proc 1997. Вып.1. С. 49-50.

      Issues of development of 3-D discrete models of Earth’s crust with a great number of miscellaneous deformable elements are considered. Known 2-D disk and single-layer block models of the lithosphere require much memory and computer time at computations on sequential computers and do not allow to conduct modeling with a great number of elements. The suggested computer crust dynamics models are intended for numerical experiments on a parallel super-computer and provide for complexity build-up both quantitatively, i.e. increase in the number of the elements up to several hundred thousands, and qualitatively, i.e. employment of actual geophysical and seismic data, earthquake catalogs and results of seismoactive region morphostructural analysis, complex deformation and destruction mechanisms, taking into consideration geological structure evolution processes, etc.
      Using dynamic destruction models requires computation of stress fields, displacements, injuries, temperature and other fields describing the process thermomechanics. To do this, one often has to set up non-classic boundary problems of strained body mechanics. In addition to algorithmic difficulties, solution of such problems involves quite a great amount of computations and may be efficient only provided high-performance computers are used. RAS Urals Branch IMM is developing algorithmic tools and software for destruction mechanics problem modeling and study which are oriented to employment of parallel multi-processor systems and algorithms.
      In particular, a program system is being developed for a powerful computer with many processors operating in parallel and large-capacity main memory. The software package is based on the finite element method in the destruction mechanics problems and direct minimization of an appropriate dynamic system state functional. It is designed for modeling and studying elastic-plastic (including shock) interaction of spatial bodies with fatigue and destruction effects and allows to compute the processes which occur in complex mechanical systems in detail.
      Corresponding algorithmic support and software developed for the RAS Urals Branch IMM computer is discussed. Results of the computations made to identify model and external effect parameters are given.
      The work was carried out under the auspices of Russian Fundamental Research Foundation (project N 94-01- 00361a).