An efficient parallel procedure for the simulation of crack growth using the cohesive surface methodology

Simulations of crack growth that are based on the cohesive surface methodol ogy typically involve ill-conditioned systems of equations and require much processing time. This paper shows how these systems of equations can be so lved efficiently by adopting the domain decomposition approach in which the finite element mesh is partitioned into multiple blocks. The system of equ ations is then reduced to a much smaller system of equations that is solved with an iterative algorithm in combination with a powerful two-level preco nditioner. Although the solution algorithm is more efficient than a direct solution algorithm on a single-processor computer, it becomes really attrac tive when used on a parallel computer. This is demonstrated for a large sca le simulation of crack growth in a polymer using a Cray T3E with 64 process ors. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.