Split approach for FEA simulations of very large wave propagation models

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is an important tool that has been extensively used in wave propagation models for NDE applications. With the increase and diversification of Non Destructive Evaluation (NDE) applications, the complexity and size of FE models increase considerably. Also for modeling wave propagation models, the size of the FE problem depends on the frequency that is used and velocity of sound in the material. High ultrasonic frequency applications and materials with lower ultrasonic velocity contribute immensely to the increase in the FE problem size. Additionally, the requirements for 3D models are also increasing. This calls for higher computation resources to be available at the hands of the researcher at significant costs. We have developed a new approach to model such extremely large FE problems that involves splitting the entire model to be analyzed into smaller sub-models and by solving each sub-models sequentially, while transferring the outputs at the boundaries between the sub-models. Thus, the entire "large" model now consists of a few "smaller" sub-models. The size of these smaller models can be decided upon by the researcher depending on the computing capacity available. While this approach may not provide significant improvements in the time of computation, it allows for the computation of large models possible with relatively less computational resources. The model was tested on a few case studies and validated with the results obtained from a full "large" model. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.