Computer simulations are about to replace experiments in various field
s, and the scale of the models to be simulated tend to be extremely la
rge. To perform large-scale finite element analyses, the authors propo
se the parallel use of multiple supercomputers connected to one anothe
r through a high-speed network. In other words, a supercomputer networ
k is regarded as a parallel computer. As a parallel numerical algorith
m for the finite element analysis, we adopt the domain decomposition m
ethod (DDM) combined with an iterative solver, i.e. the conjugate grad
ient (CG) method, where a whole analysis domain is fictitiously divide
d into a number of subdomains without overlapping. Finite element anal
yses of the subdomains are performed under the constraint of both disp
lacement continuity and force equivalence among subdomains. Such a con
straint can be satisfied through iterative calculations such as the CG
method. The present DDM-based parallel finite element algorithm is co
mbined with the server-client model for data and processor management
to have the workload balanced dynamically between the processors, and
is implemented first on an engineering workstation (EWS) network and t
hen on a supercomputer network. The accuracy and parallel performance
of the present system are tested using the network composed of various
EWSs. Finally, it is demonstrated that the present system implemented
on the supercomputer network can solve the three-dimensional elastici
ty problem of over one million degrees of freedom at an extremely high
average speed of 1.74 GFLOPS.