1 ANALYSIS OF ANCHORAGE ZONE BY FINITE ELEMENT METHOD ON WINDOWS NT CLUSTER P. K. Gupta and R. N. Khapre SUMMARY This paper presents an application of Cluster computing in finite element programming to analyze structural components. A Cluster of eight PC’s of different configurations is developed and used for the present work. Three parallel solvers of Gauss-Seidel Method, Gauss Elimination Method and Matrix Inversion Method are developed and implemented on this Cluster to achieve reduction in computational time in getting the solution of system of linear equations. The performances of these solvers are compared and the most suitable solver is implemented in a finite element software developed on Windows NT platform to analyze structural components. A typical problem of stress analysis in anchorage zone in prestressed post-tensioned concrete bema is analyzed using developed software on the developed Cluster and the variation in different components of computational time is obtained. By computing Speedup and Efficiency, the performance of the developed software is also presented. KEYWORDS Cluster Computing, Finite Element Analysis, Anchorage Zone. 1. INTRODUCTION In past few years, advancement in the field of computer technology resulted in faster computing. Now it is possible to analyze time taking problems within no time on PC’s. In the field of structural analysis using finite element method, the computations are very excessive therefore supercomputers are employed to solve such problems. Literature [1] shows that parallel solvers are essential to carry out finite element analysis on supercomputers within reduced time frame. In the development of parallel solvers, parallel computing technique [2] is used. In this