Interactive large-scale soil modeling using distributed high performance computing environments

The ability to visually interact with and guide a running simulation can gr eatly enhance understanding of both the nature of a numerical model and the characteristics of the underlying physical process. This article will disc uss the development of a distributed, interactive modeling system capable o f providing responsive visual feedback to user input. The system is built a round a discrete element soil model being used to simulate the behavior of soil masses under large deformations. In designing this application to be i nteractively responsive to the user for soil masses of several hundred thou sand particles, a range of technical problems were encountered, including t he computational burden of the discrete element method (DEM), real-time vis ualization of large particle masses, and communication of data over large d istances between heterogeneous resources using a variety of networks. This article will highlight how each of those obstacles was addressed and discus s the effectiveness of the final system.