The use of topological data-structures in the distributed solution of non-conventional finite element formulations

In this paper we present the advantages of using topological data-structures in the distributed solution of non-conventional finite element models. These data-structures may also be used with other FE formulations. The implementation, derived from Baumgartʹs winged-edge data-structure, allows to efficiently process all the information related to the finite element mesh and to each problem and formulation. The parallel performance on an heterogeneous and on an homogeneous distributed platform is presented for a series of applications in order to evaluate the efficiency of the approach.