A small open source Finite Element program with basic mesh generation, solver and viewer.
This program is meant as a barebones FEM program for quick and dirty calculations. Kind of like how you have a calculator easily accessible on your desktop, there should be a free open source FEM program which you can start up on your computer and quickly find the stiffness of a simple structure.
The code is written in python primarily to be easy to read, so it also is meant to be a resource for students or engineers who wish to dig into FEM code and build more intuition for how the finite element method works. Maybe even use parts of this code as inspiration for their own FEM code.
PS! This program should be used on relatively small FEM solutions (100 000 DOFs takes more than 2 minutes to solve on a fast computer with lots of RAM, while 20 000 DOFs can take several minutes on a 10 year old laptop), because it uses scipy.sparse.linalg, which only solves matrix equations using one CPU. No parallel computing. It can run larger models also (unless you run out of RAM), but that will take a long time.
Also it is recommended to save your work regularly while you build your solutions. This creates .mdl files which can be loaded from your last save if the program should crash. There is no undo-button. If you want to save your mesh in a more robust format, you can export it directly into a .sol file (text format).
Have fun!
Click the green "Code" button in the repository at github.com/MrMechanics/solFEM_v3 and then "download as zip". Extract the zip file (and rename from "solFEM_v3-main" to solFEM_v3" if you want).
Python3 with the following modules must be installed for the program to work:
- numpy
- scipy
- matplotlib
- pyopengl
- pyqt5
- pyqt5.qtopengl
With the above mentioned python modules installed, copy the solFEM_v3 folder to any location, open a terminal window and navigate to '..\solFEM_v3\work_directory'. The program can then be started from the terminal by running the script 'program.py'. Alternatively, Python3 with all these modules comes pre-installed with Anaconda if you run the 'program.py' script from an anaconda command prompth.
Windows 10:
First install python3 with installer from www.python.org if you don't already have python3. Then open a terminal and install the extra modules with pip install:
C:\Users\username\...\current_dir> py -m pip install numpy
C:\Users\username\...\current_dir> py -m pip install scipy
C:\Users\username\...\current_dir> py -m pip install matplotlib
C:\Users\username\...\current_dir> py -m pip install pyopengl
C:\Users\username\...\current_dir> py -m pip install pyqt5
C:\Users\username\...\current_dir> py -m pip install pyqt5.qtopengl
C:\Users\username\...\current_dir> cd ...\solFEM_v3\work_directory
C:\Users\username\...\solFEM_v3\work_directory> py program.pyUbuntu:
Just open a terminal and install everything from there. Python3 might already be installed. You can check by typing python3 in the terminal.
user@user-computer:current_dir$ sudo apt install python3
user@user-computer:current_dir$ sudo apt install python3-numpy
user@user-computer:current_dir$ sudo apt install python3-scipy
user@user-computer:current_dir$ sudo apt install python3-matplotlib
user@user-computer:current_dir$ sudo apt install python3-pyopengl
user@user-computer:current_dir$ sudo apt install python3-pyqt5
user@user-computer:current_dir$ sudo apt install python3-pyqt5.qtopengl
user@user-computer:current_dir$ cd ...\solFEM_v3\work_directory
user@user-computer:current_dir/.../solFEM_v3/work_directory$ python3 program.py- Written help and tutorials accessed from inside the program -- READY!
- Case files that can be used to see working examples (..\solFEM_v3\Example Mesh Files) -- READY!
- Youtube video tutorials https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIZFRO8nj9BOW28PBSShtiw -- READY!
- Modal Dynamics solver with base motion is too slow (should not be used on models with more than 1000 nodes)
- Non-linear Static Plastic solver (need to write code for this)