Parallel Harmonic Balance Method for Analysis of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

Controlling vibration in jet engine remains one of the biggest challenges in aircraft engine design and conception. Methods dealing with vibration modelling usually rely on reduced order modelling techniques. This paper aims to provide a high fidelity method to solve vibration problems. It presents a parallel harmonic balance method applied to a full size problem. In order to be computationally efficient, a parallel harmonic balance method is used for the first time in solid mechanics. First, the parallel implementation of harmonic balance method is described in detail. The algorithm is designed to minimize communication between cores. Then, the software is tested for both beam and blade geometries. Finally, a scalability study shows promising acceleration when increasing the number of cores.