Reply To: Slow down of a mechanical simulation after restarting

[Gary Stofan]

Hybrid parallel does not apply in this case.

This issue has to do with Domain Decompsiton and efficiency.

The very high load balance ratio 5.633 triggers the solver to use only 32 cores instead of 40
as 40 would not be efficient for your problem. Load balance 1.0 is theortically perfect. In practice, 2.0 or less is reasonable. 
The APDL runs is likely very slow due to this high imbalance. Contact elements and how they are scoped causes this imbalance. 

What to do?
 - Set for 32 cores and allow it to run.
 - Or, try fewer cores to see if the load balance improves.
 - Or, Rescope contact pairs.