Abstract
Over the past decade or so, many commercial computational codes have become available for solving a great number of practical problems in both scientific and engineering fields. Primary advantages of using commercial computational codes are: (1) built-in pre-processing and post-processing tools make it very easy and attractive to prepare, input and output data which are essential in a numerical analysis; (2) provision of movie/animation functions enables numerical results, the treatment of which is often a cumbersome and tedious task, to be visualised via clear and colourful images; (3) detailed benchmark solutions and documentation as well as many embedded robust solution algorithms allow the codes to be used more easily, correctly, effectively and efficiently for solving a wide range of practical problems. However, the main disadvantage of using commercial computational codes is that each code is often designed, within a certain limit, for solving some particular kinds of practical problems. This disadvantage becomes more and more obvious because the ever-increasing competitiveness in the world economy requires us to deal with more and more complicated and complex geoscience problems, which are encountered and not solved in the field of contemporary computational geoscience. There are three basic ways to overcome the above difficulties. The first is to develop some new commercial computational codes, which is time consuming and often not cost-effective for numerical analysts and consultants. The second is to extend an existing commercial computational code, which is usually impossible because the source code is often not available for the code users. The third is to use several existing commercial computational codes in combination. This requires development of a data translation tool to transfer data necessary between each of the codes to be used. Compared with the difficulties encountered in the first two approaches, the third one is more competitive for most numerical analysts and consultants.
Published Version
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