EpSFEM: A Julia-Based Software Package of Parallel Incremental Smoothed Finite Element Method (S-FEM) for Elastic-Plastic Problems

Abstract

In this paper, a parallel Smoothed Finite Element Method (S-FEM) package epSFEM using incremental theory to solve elastoplastic problems is developed by employing the Julia language on a multicore CPU. The S-FEM, a new numerical method combining the Finite Element Method (FEM) and strain smoothing technique, was proposed by Liu G.R. in recent years. The S-FEM model is softer than the FEM model for identical grid structures, has lower sensitivity to mesh distortion, and usually produces more accurate solutions and a higher convergence speed. Julia, as an efficient, user-friendly and open-source programming language, balances computational performance, programming difficulty and code readability. We validate the performance of the epSFEM with two sets of benchmark tests. The benchmark results indicate that (1) the calculation accuracy of epSFEM is higher than that of the FEM when employing the same mesh model; (2) the commercial FEM software requires 10,619 s to calculate an elastoplastic model consisting of approximately 2.45 million triangular elements, while in comparison, epSFEM requires only 5876.3 s for the same computational model; and (3) epSFEM executed in parallel on a 24-core CPU is approximately 10.6 times faster than the corresponding serial version.