GeoFEM: high performance parallel FEM for solid earth

The Science and Technology Agency of Japan began an Earth Simulator project in the 1997 fiscal year, that will be able to forecast various earth pheno mena through simulation. GeoFEM is a parallel finite element software for s olving problems involving the solid earth. In this paper, we briefly descri be the GeoFEM project and discuss GeoFEM's capability for large-scale analy sis and the results of simple benchmark analyses. At this stage, the larges t linear elastic problem that has been solved by GeoFEM involves more than 10(8) degrees of freedom (DOF). In the 2001 fiscal year, we will attempt to solve a 10(10) DOF problem using the Earth Simulator. (C) 2001 Elsevier Sc ience B.V. All rights reserved.