| Most research and development in the general area of computer-based structural analysis has focused on classes of problems pushing the feasibility boundaries of whatever contemporary hardware has been available at the time. Research of this nature has been and continues to be extremely useful, but in this dissertation the focus is on a different boundary: the boundary between problems that can be solved and visualized using live modeling and those that cannot. Live modeling can be defined as computational environments that allow one to interact with an analytical model directly via controls or mouse gestures and to see the results of these actions immediately in an animated, quasi-real time fashion.; The main purpose of this study is two fold: (1) to characterize the current feasible boundary for live modeling in a range of structural mechanics contexts, and (2) to identify and develop strategies and techniques to extend the live modeling boundary for various classes of problems.; To address the feasible live modeling boundaries, comprehensive tests have been performed using the prototype finite element program implemented specifically for this study. Since the practical boundaries are strongly influenced by solution algorithms, a variety of solution algorithms are implemented and compared to various external high performance libraries to ensure the validity of the live modeling boundaries that will be identified in this study. Studies on contemporary hardware were also conducted to further extend the identified boundaries, mainly focusing on understanding and exploiting the physical memory system for the choice of an effective and efficient data structure.; This work is focused primarily on serial computing environments with a conventional programming style. However, some consideration is also given to semi-vector processing that is available using current desktop CPUs. This work also provides some simple bounds on live modeling for multi-CPU environments, which are becoming more common for desktop class machines. |
