Elmer is a computational tool for multi-

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

problems. It has been developed by CSC in collaboration with Finnish universities, research laboratories and industry. Elmer FEM solver is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

, subject to the requirements of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

(GPL), version 2 or any later. Elmer includes physical models of

fluid dynamics In physics, physical chemistry and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids – liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including (the study of air and other gases in motion ...

structural mechanics Structural mechanics or mechanics of structures is the computation of deformations, deflections, and internal forces or stresses (''stress equivalents'') within structures, either for design or for performance evaluation of existing structures. ...

electromagnetics In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge via electromagnetic fields. The electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental forces of nature. It is the dominant force in the interacti ...

heat transfer Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the generation, use, conversion, and exchange of thermal energy (heat) between physical systems. Heat transfer is classified into various mechanisms, such as thermal conduction, ...

and

acoustics Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician ...

, for example. These are described by partial differential equations which Elmer solves by the

Finite Element Method Finite element method (FEM) is a popular method for numerically solving differential equations arising in engineering and mathematical modeling. Typical problem areas of interest include the traditional fields of structural analysis, heat tran ...

(FEM). Elmer comprises several different parts: * ElmerGrid – A mesh conversion tool, which can be used to convert differing mesh formats into Elmer-suitable meshes. * ElmerGUI – A graphical interface which can be used on an existing mesh to assign physical models, this generates a "case file" which describes the problem to be solved. Does not show the whole ElmerSolver functionality in GUI. * ElmerSolver – The numerical solver which performs the finite element calculations, using the mesh and case files. * ElmerPost – A post-processing/visualisation module. (Development stopped in favour of other post-processing tools such as ParaView, VisIt, etc.) The different parts of Elmer software may be used independently. Whilst the main module is the ElmerSolver tool, which includes many sophisticated features for physical model solving, the additional components are required to create a full workflow. For pre- and post-processing other tools, such as

Paraview ParaView is an open-source multiple-platform application for interactive, scientific visualization. It has a client–server architecture to facilitate remote visualization of datasets, and generates level of detail (LOD) models to maintain in ...

can be used to visualise the output. The software runs on Unix and Windows platforms and can be compiled on a large variety of compilers, using the

CMake CMake is a free, cross-platform, software development tool for building applications via compiler-independent instructions. It also can automate testing, packaging and installation. It runs on a variety of platforms and supports many program ...

building tool. The solver can also be used in a multi-host parallel mode on platforms that support

MPI MPI or Mpi may refer to: Science and technology Biology and medicine * Magnetic particle imaging, a tomographic technique * Myocardial perfusion imaging, a medical procedure that illustrates heart function * Mannose phosphate isomerase, an enzyme ...

. Elmer's parallelisation capability is one of the strongest sides of this solver.

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References

{{CAE software Numerical software Free computer-aided design software Finite element software for Linux Free software programmed in Fortran Free science software Computational physics Engineering software that uses Qt Computer-aided engineering software for Linux Software that uses Tk (software)

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References