Dynamic Domain Decomposition and Load Balancing in Parallel Simulation of Finite/discrete Elements

A dynamic domain decomposition strategy is proposed for the effective parallel implementation of combined finite/discrete element approaches. Attention is focused on the parallelised interaction detection between discrete objects. Issues including graph representation, initial partitioning and dynamic re-partitioning are discussed and a load imbalance detection and re-balancing scheme is also suggested. Finally, numerical examples are provided to illustrate the parallel performance achieved with the current implementation.