fenics team mailing list archive

["Johan Hoffman" <jhoffman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all!

We are now in the process of launching a new FEniCS project, focused on
developing a simple and general solver for advanced applications, by
identifying and implementing common abstractions. The new project will be
based on our adaptive General Galerkin (G2) methodology, which we have
developed for incompressible/compressible laminar/turbulent flow, and
which we also recently at KTH have extended to fluid-structure interaction
(FSI). Thus our initial focus is on developing a general solver for
computational continuum mechanics, for which we have a prototype
available. Later on we expect to also add electromagnetics, chemistry and
physics.

So far this development has taken place within Dolfin, but it has shown
that solver development inside Dolfin has not been optimal, and recently
we in the Dolfin core team decided to move the solver modules outside
Dolfin. Dolfin is still the PSE of FEniCS suitable for developing your own
solver, whereas this new project is written on top of Dolfin, and is
focused on developing a general solver for certain application areas, to
start with continuum mechanics (FSI). Since both me and Johan Jansson are
main developers of Dolfin, we expect the coupling of the 2 projects to
work fine, and we expect Dolfin development to benefit from the new
project by involving many new developers working both on Dolfin and the
new project. When algorithms are more suitable to implement in Dolfin than
in the new project, we will do so. Ideally there will be few lines of code
in the new project, taking advantage of the many general PDE tools
available in Dolfin-FFC-FIAT.

The new project is not a loose collection of solvers. On the other hand,
our new project will focus on developing a general solver based on the
physics of a certain area, to start with continuum mechanics. Basic
ingredients of the methodology are the G2 method, adaptivity and a
posteriori error estimation based on duality, and ALE-methods.

So far there has been a lot of focus on the basics of CMM, such as
assembling forms etc. And as much as I think the bottom-up approach is
important to realize the FEniCS vision, I also think it is important to
balance this with a top-down project of this type.

The project will be maintained by myself and Johan Jansson, and the rest
of our group at KTH, but we hope to attract many other developers also
outside KTH. Version 0.1 can be expected to more or less consist of
dolfin-fsi minus dolfin-dev, together with some Ko.

I hope and believe that this new project will generate a lot of interest.

A tentative title of this new project is: "FEniCS General Galerkin solver"

Any input is appreciated!

/Johan