A sub‐structure based parallel solution of coupled thermo‐hydro‐mechanical modelling of unsaturated soil

Abstract

This paper presents a parallelised substructure based finite element approach to the solution of fully coupled heat, moisture and deformation problems in partially saturated soil. A numerical model, based on previous work, is developed so that it is capable of solving larger and more complex problems with limited computing resources. The algorithm also offers the advantage of the strategy for further development within the context of parallel computing. A refinement to the standard substructure algorithm has been introduced for the matrix condensing procedure employed at the sub‐structure level, to improve computational efficiency. A numerical simulation is then performed using a parallel computer code for the fully coupled analysis, operating on a MIMD parallel computer (the Paramid). The benefits of the new approach are thus displayed. As a check on the accuracy of the new method, good correlation with other independent solutions are observed. Finally, the computing work performed indicates that the algorithm is yielding encouraging results, providing confidence in the further development of the approach.