Evaluation of Eigenvalue Routines for Large Scale Applications

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Tischler, V.A.^; | Venkayya, V.B.

Affiliations: Wright Laboratory, Wright Patterson AFB, OH, 45433-6553

Note: [] This article is a US Government work and, as such, is in the public domain in the United States of America.

Abstract: The NASA structural analysis (NASTRAN NASTRAN without qualification refers to COSMIC-NASTRAN (or government version) in the paper.) program is one of the most extensively used engineering applications software in the world. It contains a wealth of matrix operations and numerical solution techniques, and they were used to construct efficient eigenvalue routines. The purpose of this article is to examine the current eigenvalue routines in NASTRAN and to make efficiency comparisons with a more recent implementation of the block Lanczos algorithm. This eigenvalue routine is now available in several mathematics libraries as well as in several commercial versions of NASTRAN. In addition, the CRAY library maintains a modified version of this routine on their network. Several example problems, with a varying number of degrees of freedom, were selected primarily for efficiency bench-marking. Accuracy is not an issue, because they all gave comparable results. The block Lanczos algorithm was found to be extremely efficient, particularly for very large problems.

DOI: 10.3233/SAV-1994-1301

Journal: Shock and Vibration, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 201-216, 1994