A Scalable Time-Parallel Solution of Periodic Rotor Dynamics in X3D

A time-parallel algorithm is developed for large-scale three-dimensional rotor dynamic analysis. A modified harmonic balance method with a scalable skyline solver forms the kernel of this algorithm. The algorithm is equipped with a solution procedure suitable for large-scale structures that have lightly damped modes near resonance. The algorithm is integrated in X3D, implemented on a hybrid shared and distributed memory architecture, and demonstrated on a three-dimensional structural model of a UH-60A-like fully articulated rotor. Flight-test data from UH-60A Airloads Program transition flight C8513 are used for validation. The key conclusion is that the new solver converges to the time marching solution more than 50 times faster and achieves a performance greater than 1 teraFLOPS. The significance of this conclusion is that the principal barrier of computational time for trim solution using high-fidelity three-dimensional structures can be overcome with the scalable harmonic balance method demonstrated in this paper.