fenics team mailing list archive

[Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2007 at 08:27:40PM +0200, Johan Hoffman wrote:

> Yes, boosting interest is good, but why can't the two be combined? I
> would prefer a single project dolfin-modules containing a collection of
> DOLFIN solvers, including your solvers and others.
> >
> > /Anders
> >
> 
> I do not understand. What other solvers are you referring to?
> I talk about to constitute our new project is the Navier-Stokes/Euler
> solvers (compressible + incompressible, the ALE-FSI solver, and the
> elasticity solver. In the list at
> www.fenics.org/wiki/DOLFIN_solver_modules, I can only see Stokes, Poisson,
> heat eqn. and convection-diffusion, apart from these. Are these the
> solvers you refer to? I consider these solvers rather being simple demos,
> to either stay in the Dolfin-kernel for demo/test, or to be dropped, not
> being part of a solver project for advanced applications.
> 
> If the motive of such a dolfin-module project would only be a showcase of
> a collection of Dolfin solvers, I think we might as well host a webpage at
> the wiki with links to download the solvers from developers together with
> info on what version of Dolfin it works for, and couple this to the
> gallery. This would serve the purpose and would minimize maintainment
> work. And here our new project would also be present for showcasing
> Dolfin.
> 
> The project I suggest is not just a showcase of Dolfin solvers, it is
> aimed at developing solvers for automating/generalizing modelling for
> advanced applications in different areas. For starters, our NS-solver for
> turbulent flow would fit here as an automated turbulence solver, using one
> simple method (G2 including adaptivity) for "all" turbulent flows
> (contrary to common practise of using specific turbulence models for
> different flows). We are now working on generalizing this solver to
> compressible flow and fluid-structure interaction. Thus there would then
> be one solver for turbulent fluid-structure interaction, which would
> correspond to automated modeling of FSI.
> 
> So far we have no FEniCS project on advanced solvers or automation of
> modeling, so this project would fill that gap, and would not interfere
> with any other FEniCS project as far as I can see.

True, but why must the set of solvers be limited to NSE with cG(1)?

Examples of other solvers that would be nice to see in a
dolfin-modules collection would be the plasticity solver and the
other modules we just removed along with the NSE solver. Indeed some
of these were very simple, but they don't need to be. The goal has
always been that the modules would offer more than the demos. Just
having an adaptive and very efficient Poisson solver in such a
collection of modules would be very useful.

> If the name is disturbing, signaling exclusivity, we can use another name,
> not containing FEniCS or Dolfin. If then someone else want to publish an
> advanced solver project at FEniCS that is of course also very welcome. So
> far I have heard nothing about such a project.
> 
> /Johan

I don't mind the name, I just think here is a chance to take the
DOLFIN modules and make something very good and useful of them, which
would be to offer a collection of very efficient, adaptive and
polished solvers for a range of equations.

/Anders