Kenneth M. Will

A shear–flexible element with warping for thin-walled open beams

A new finite element for the analysis of thin-walled open beams with an arbitrary cross section is presented. Combining Timoshenko beam theory and Vlasov thin-walled beam theory, the derived element includes both flexural shear deformations and warping deformations caused by the bimoment. By adopting an orthogonal Cartesian co-ordinate system, one can obviate the ad hoc introduction of St. Venant stiffness. The derived block stiffness matrix is comparable but more general than the one given by earlier researchers. The versatility and accuracy of the new element are demonstrated by comparing the numerical results with the classical solutions or other numerical results available in the literature.

A High Performance Multifrontal Code for Linear Solution of Structures Using Multi-Core Microprocessors

Abstract A multifrontal code is introduced for the efficient solution of the linear system of equations arising from the analysis of structures. The factorization phase is reduced into a series of interleaved element assembly and dense matrix operations for which the BLAS3 kernels are used. A similar approach is generalized for the forward and back substitution phases for the efficient solution of structures having multiple load conditions. The program performs all assembly and solution steps in parallel. Examples are presented which demonstrate the codes performance on single and dual core processor computers.