FEFLOW (Finite Element subsurface FLOW system) is a computer program for

simulating A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...

groundwater

flow Flow may refer to: Science and technology * Fluid flow, the motion of a gas or liquid * Flow (geomorphology), a type of mass wasting or slope movement in geomorphology * Flow (mathematics), a group action of the real numbers on a set * Flow (psych ...

, mass transfer and heat transfer in porous media and fractured media. The program uses

finite element analysis The 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 ...

to solve the groundwater flow equation of both saturated and unsaturated conditions as well as mass and heat transport, including

fluid In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that continuously deforms (''flows'') under an applied shear stress, or external force. They have zero shear modulus, or, in simpler terms, are substances which cannot resist any shear ...

density effects and

chemical kinetics Chemical kinetics, also known as reaction kinetics, is the branch of physical chemistry that is concerned with understanding the rates of chemical reactions. It is to be contrasted with chemical thermodynamics, which deals with the direction in ...

for multi-component reaction systems.

History

The software was firstly introduced by Hans-Jörg G. Diersch in 1979, se

and. He developed the software in the Institute of Mechanics of the

German Academy of Sciences Berlin The German Academy of Sciences at Berlin, german: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (DAW), in 1972 renamed the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (''Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR (AdW)''), was the most eminent research institution ...

up to 1990. In 1990 he was one of the founders of WASY GmbH of

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

(the acronym WASY translates from German to ''Institute for Water Resources Planning and Systems Research''), where FEFLOW has been developed further, continuously improved and extended as a commercial simulation package. In 2007 the shares of WASY GmbH were purchased by DHI. The WASY company has been fused and FEFLOW became part of the DHI Group software portfolio. FEFLOW is being further developed at DHI by an international team. Software distribution and services are worldwide.

Technology

The program is offered in both

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

and 64-bit versions for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and Linux operating systems. FEFLOW's theoretical basis is fully described in the comprehensive ''FEFLOW book''.Diersch, Hans-Jörg G., ''FEFLOW – Finite element modeling of flow, mass and heat transport in porous and fractured media'', Springer, 2014, Berlin Heidelberg, XXXV, 996p., , (eBook), doi:10.1007/978-3-642-38739-5. It covers a wide range of physical and computational issues in the field of porous/fractured-media modeling. The book starts with a more general theory for all relevant flow and transport phenomena on the basis of the

continuum mechanics Continuum mechanics is a branch of mechanics that deals with the mechanical behavior of materials modeled as a continuous mass rather than as discrete particles. The French mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy was the first to formulate such m ...

, systematically develops the basic framework for important classes of problems (e.g., multiphase/multispecies non-isothermal flow and transport phenomena, variably saturated porous media, free-surface groundwater flow, aquifer-averaged equations, discrete feature elements), introduces finite element methods for solving the basic multidimensional balance equations, in detail discusses advanced numerical algorithms for the resulting nonlinear and linear problems, and completes with a number of benchmarks, applications and exercises to illustrate the different types of flow, mass and heat transport problems (e.g., subsurface flow and seepage problems, unsaturated-saturated flow, advective-diffusion transport, saltwater intrusion, geothermal and thermohaline flow).

Other groundwater simulators

* MODFLOW * Groundwater Modeling System * MARTHE *

HydroGeoSphere HydroGeoSphere (HGS) is a 3D control-volume finite element groundwater model, and is based on a rigorous conceptualization of the hydrologic system consisting of surface and subsurface flow regimes. The model is designed to take into account all ...

* HYDRUS * PORFLOW * MicroFEM LT * OpenGeoSys * Leapfrog Hydro *

ECLIPSE simulator An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...

with the H2O extension

Peer review

References

External links

*{{official website, www.feflow.com Finite element software Finite element software for Linux Hydrogeology software Scientific simulation software Software that uses Motif (software) Engineering software that uses Qt Geology software for Linux