The double Column block method applies to solute of large sparse linear simultaneous equations in finite element analysis. At present the portioned triangular decomposition method is generally used for solving large systems of linear equations in FE. With the partition of the coefficient matrix dependent on its bandwidth

the solution of problems with a large bandwidth is restricted owing to the computer core storage and hence it is difficult for this method to solve some large-scal FE problems

especially the three-dimensional problems. This difficulty has been overcome by the double column block method

completely independent of the bandwidth

by means of our method the coefficient matrix is partitioned according to computer core storage capacity. It is proved that this approach is successful and effective. Based on this method

the solution has been completed of the three-dimensional FE problem with 124 twenty-node and 8 sixteen-node isoparametric elements

and 831 nodes

having a maximum half-bandwidth of 1746 and global stiffness matrix storage of more than 5000 K bytes. The computation was performed on PE-3220 minicomputer and only a core storage of 685 K bytes was used. The double column block method makes it possible for minicomputer and high-level microcomputer to be applied to calculations in large-scale FE problems.