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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a study of the parallelization of the construction of explicit constraints or limit‐state functions using support vector machines. These explicit boundaries have proven to be beneficial for design optimization and reliability assessment, especially for problems with large computational times, discontinuities, or binary outputs. In addition to the study of the parallelization, the objective of this article is also to provide an approach to select the number of processors.Design/methodology/approach – This article investigates the parallelization in two ways. First, the efficiency of the parallelization is assessed by comparing, over several runs, the number of iterations needed to create an accurate boundary to the number of iterations associated with a theoretical “linear” speedup. Second, by studying these differences, an “appropriate” range of parallel processors can be inferred.Findings – The parallelization of the construction of explicit boundaries ca...

PurposeThe use of stent‐grafts to canalize aortic blood flow for patients with aortic aneurysms is subject to serious failure mechanisms such as a leak between the stent‐graft and the aorta (Type I endoleak). The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel computational approach to understand the influence of relevant variables on the occurrence of stent‐graft failure and quantify the probability of failure for aneurysm patients.Design/methodology/approachA parameterized fluid‐structure interaction finite element model of aortic aneurysm is built based on a multi‐material formulation available in LS‐DYNA. Probabilities of failure are assessed using an explicit construction of limit state functions with support vector machines (SVM) and uniform designs of experiments. The probabilistic approach is applied to two aneurysm geometries to provide a map of probabilities of failure for various design parameter values.FindingsParametric studies conducted in the course of this research successfully identified intuitive failure regions in the parameter space, and failure probabilities were calculated using both a simplified and more complex aneurysmal geometry.Originality/valueThis research introduces the use of SVM‐based explicit design space decomposition for probabilistic assessment applied to bioengineering problems. This technique allows one to efficiently calculate probabilities of failure. It is particularly suited for problems where outcomes can only be classified as safe or failed (e.g. leak or no leak). Finally, the proposed fluid‐structure interaction simulation accounts for the initiation of Type I endoleak between the graft and the aneurysm due to simultaneous fluid and solid forces.

Traditional parallel methods for structural design, as well as modern preconditioned iterative linear solvers, do not scale well. This paper discusses the application of massively scalable cellular automata (CA) techniques to structural design, specifically trusses. There are two sets of CA rules, one used to propagate stresses and strains, and one to perform design updates. These rules can be applied serially, periodically, or concurrently, and Jacobi or Gauss‐Seidel style updating can be done. These options are compared with respect to convergence, speed, and stability for an example, problem of combined sizing and topology design of truss domain structures. The central theme of the paper is that the cellular automaton paradigm is tantamount to classical block Jacobi or block Gauss‐Seidel iteration, and consequently the performance of a cellular automaton can be rigorously analyzed and predicted.