Distributed Finite Element Analysis of Laminated Composites

Abstract

In recent years, fibre reinforced laminated composite plates have been increasingly used as structural elements in civil, military and aerospace fields because of their desirable properties such as high strength-to-weight ratio and high stiffness-to-weight ratio. Finite element analysis of large size composite laminate problem considering higher order shear deformation theory is highly computational intensive. In the present paper, distributed computing is implemented for finite element analysis of laminated composite plate to improve computational efficiency. Substructure technique is used for distribution of computations on different computers connected in local area network (LAN). WebDedip environment, developed using Java technology, is used for distributed implementation.An example of simply supported layered composite plate is discussed to show effectiveness of distributed computing. A computational efficiency of about 60 % - 80% is observed when the problem is implemented over three to six computers.