OpenSees is a software framework for developing applications to simulate the performance of structural and geotechnical systems subjected to earthquakes. We have all three executables for version 3.2.0 installed on Shamu: OpenSees, OpenSeesSP, and OpenSeesMP. To use the software, please use the following command to load the module on a compute node interactively or load the module in a SLURM script for a batch job.

abc123@shamu ~]$ module load opensees/3.2.0

To use the non-parallel program OpenSees, simple type in the following command in an interactive session terminal or put the command in a SLURM script for a batch job:

abc123@shamu ~]$ OpenSees example.tcl

OpenSeesSP and OpenSeesMP are the parallel versions of the program. OpenSeesSP is designed for performing analysis of very large models, OpenSeesMP is designed for performing parameter studies or analysis of large models with user defined partitions. They are both MPI enabled applications. The corresponding MPI package is loaded together with the opensees/3.2.0 module. Users can find the detailed document about how to build a parallelizable model with the parallel OpenSees at https://opensees.berkeley.edu/OpenSees/parallel/parallel.php.

Although the models for OpenSeeSP and OpenSeesMP are built differently, the way to run the models in a multiple-core computer or an HPC cluster are the same:

abc123@shamu ~]$ mpirun -n 5 OpenSeesMP model_for_MP.tcl

abc123@shamu ~]$ mpirun -n 5 OpenSeesSP model_for_SP.tcl

The performance can be improved significantly by parallelization. The performance benchmarks of the two programs on Shamu are shown in the following plots:

-- Zhiwei - 10 Dec 2020