At present, the scale of geotechnical projects becomes larger and larger. The structures and geological environments met in the projects are more and more complicated and the requirements for computing precision and time become higher and higher. To satisfy these increasing demands, we propose parallel computing based on PC on Windows NT for geotechnical engineering problems. Some algorithms on parallel finite element method, parallel boundary element method, parallel finite difference method and parallel genetic programming are presented. The results of slope stability evaluation by parallel genetic programming show that the parallel system on Windows NT can overcome the difficulties of large-scale geotechnical simulations.
Currently the scale of geotechnical projects, such as Three Gorges Projects, the excavation of large underground openings in Qingjiang Shuibuya Water Power Plant, becomes larger and larger, the structures and geological environments met in the projects are more and more complicated and the requirements for computing precision and time become higher and higher. Due to the restrictions of the speed and storage capacity of single PC, the simulations of large projects are generally performed under many simplifications, with few considerations of the complicated structures and small geological tectonics. Besides, info construction is a new branch of geotechnical engineering. Info construction is to readjust the original design based on the rock and soil parameters which are obtained by back analysis using the data monitored during the construction. The adjusted designs should be finished before the next construction step. Consequently to implement these computations with high precision and in real reasonable short time is a new challenge to geotechnical engineering. Even though specialized supercomputer has large memory and high speed, it may be difficult for a single supercomputer to solve such super large problems as global weather simulation either. Furthermore it is not convenient for most of geotechnical engineers to access supercomputers. On the other hand, the speed of PC processors and performance of Windows NT have been improved rapidly in recent years. All these factors enable a cluster of PCs connected by LAN to be an ideal substitute of SGI/Cray T3E or IBM SP2. Clusters of PCs have many advantages, such as much lower cost higher scalability and flexibility, over supercomputers. ' Presently little concern on parallel computing is shown and few literatures can be referred to in geotechnical engineering. The current paper proposes parallel computing methods to solve large-scale problems in geotechnical engineering. Parallel computing solves large-scale problems by making use of the CPU and memory of many single personal computers, so it reduces greatly the computing time and increases the scale of computing problems. The applications of some parallel computing methods in geotechnical engineering are described. These methods include parallel domain decomposition finite element method, parallel finite difference method parallel boundary element method and parallel genetic programming, etc.. Then the features and implement of parallel platform on Windows NT are presented. As an example, results of slope stability evaluation by parallel genetic programming are reported.
