CNA Working Group: Fall 2010

TITLE: Streamlining the Development of Finite Element Code

ABSTRACT: A finite element code has three distinct components,

1) Mesh generation (provides a cell complex)
2) Numerical kernel (constructs element matrices)
3) Linear solver and the "glue" connecting these components are the degrees of freedom.

Robust open source meshing and linear solver software is now freely available, and the problem dependent portion of the numerical kernel is typically no more than a page of code. This is not so for the dof bookkeeper; code to manage the dof's for a specific problem is often tedious and time consuming to write.

After some introductory material, the seminar will focus on automating the dof bookkeeper. A bookkeeper interacts with the mesh generator (via a cell complex), numerical kernel (via basis functions), and linear solver (via indices for matrices and vectors), so it is necessary to specify interfaces between all of these components and the functionality required of each.

Organizer: Noel J. Walkington

The organizational meeting will take place on Thursday, September 16 at 3:30 pm in Wean Hall 7201.