A GPU Accelerated Continuous-Based Discrete Element Method for Elastodynamics Analysis

This paper presents a GPU computing algorithm, used to accelerate the Continuous-based Discrete Element Method (CDEM). Using a NVIDIA GTX VGA card, the computing speed achieved an average 650 times speedup ratio vs. Intel Core-Dual 2.66 GHz CPU. To parallelize the CDEM algorithm, the clone node force refreshing process is separated from the elemental calculation, and is replaced by a “Node Group” force assignment process, which ensures the data independence in parallel execution.