Objectives

The finite element method (FEM) is widely used in the fields of mechanical engineering, electromagnetic field analysis, computational fluid dynamics, and so on. Even though analysis software for single physical phenomenon is provided commercially for desktop computers and PC clusters, development of FEM application software is still required when coupling multi-physics – using high end computer environments.Our group is developing the ppOpen-APPL/FEM middleware as an infrastructure for developing optimized simulation software, making efficient use of the FEM on post-peta scale supercomputing environments possible. An application developer can use the APIs provided by the ppOpen-APPL/FEM middleware for writing FEM simulation codes on a PC containing a single processor. As the parallel programing model is concealed by the ppOpen-APPL/FEM middleware, the application developer is free of consideration for the complexity of parallel software-development aspects. The FEM simulation code can easily be optimized for various types of post-peta scale parallel computers by using autotuning technology.Following features will be implemented in the ppOpen-APPL/FEM middleware.

• Data input and output
• Domain partition, communication between domains
• Creation of stiffness matrix, explicit method solver
• Iterative solver with preconditioner considering a characteristic of the finite element method
• Adaptive mesh, dynamical load averaging
• Support three dimensional tetrahedron, hexahedron, beam and shell elements in 1st and 2nd order.
• Inteface for ppOpen-MATH, ppOpen-AT and ppOpen-SYS

Member list

• Hiroshi OkudaGraduate School of Frontier Sciences, the University of Tokyo
• Takeshi KitayamaGraduate School of Frontier Sciences, the University of Tokyo
• Gaku HashimotoDepartment of Systems Innovation, School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo
• Susumu YamadaCenter for Computational Science & E-systems, Japan Atomic Energy Agency