Parallel computation of aerodynamic influence coefficients for aeroelastic analysis on a transputer network

Abstract

Aeroelastic analysis is multi-disciplinary and computationally expensive. Hence, it can greatly benefit from parallel processing. As part of an effort to develop an aeroelastic analysis capability on a distributed-memory transputer network, a parallel algorithm for the computation of aerodynamic influence coefficients is implemented on a network of 32 transputers. The aerodynamic influence coefficients are calculated using a three-dimensional unsteady aerodynamic model and a panel discretization. Efficiencies up to 85% are demonstrated using 32 processors. The effects of subtask ordering, problem size and network topology are presented. A comparison to results on a shared-memory computer indicates that higher speedup is achieved on the distributed-memory system.