Initial experience with distributing structural calculations among computers operating in parallel

An existing program is currently being adapted to perform finite element analysis by distributing substructures over a network of four Apple IIe microcomputers connected to a shared disk. In this network, one microcomputer controls the entire process while the others perform the analysis on each substructure in parallel. This substructure analysis is used in an iterative, fully stressed, structural resizing procedure. This procedure allows experimentatation with resizing in which all analyses are not completed during a single iteration. This research gives some insight on how to configure multidiscriplinary analysis and optimization procedures for decomposable engineering systems using either high performance engineering workstations or a parallel processor supercomputer. In addition, the operational experience gained facilitates the implementation of analysis programs on these new computers when they become available in an engineering environment.