Domain decomposition methods for parallel solution of shape sensitivity analysis problems

This paper presents the implementation of advanced domain decomposition techniques for parallel solution of large-scale shape sensitivity analysis problems. The methods presented in this study are based on the FETI method proposed by Farhat and Roux which is a dual domain decomposition implementation. Two variants of the basic FETI method have been implemented in this study: (i) FETI-1 where the rigid-body modes of the floating subdomains are computed explicitly. (ii) FETI-2 where the local problem at each subdomain is solved by the PCG method and the rigid-body modes are computed explicitly. A two-level iterative method is proposed particularly tailored to solve re-analysis type of problems, where the dual domain decomposition method is incorporated in the preconditioning step of a subdomain global PCG implementation. The superiority of this two-level iterative solver is demonstrated with a number of numerical tests in serial as well as in parallel computing environments. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.