A program for efficiently solving the modal frequency response problem for large structures

The modal frequency response problem is solved in many vibration analyses of large structures. Commercial programs that are currently available solve this problem by factoring the coefficient matrix at hundreds or thousands of frequencies, which can take many hours. Recently, new algorithms have been developed at the University of Texas that solve the modal frequency response problem much more economically than by performing a direct factorization at every frequency. These fast frequency response analysis algorithms can be used to solve various extensions to the modal frequency response problem that accommodate fluid-structure interaction, enforced motion, and structural optimization using the modal correction approach. These algorithms had previously been implemented in a research program designed for use with shared memory parallel computers. The research discussed in this thesis is focused on creating a new implementation of these fast frequency response analysis algorithms in a maintainable, object-oriented program for distributed memory parallel computers using the Message Passing Interface standard. This program has been shown to produce accurate results much more quickly than commercial programs that solve the modal frequency response problem by factoring the coefficient matrix at every frequency and has achieved significant parallel speedup when run on multiprocessor computers