An object-oriented approach to fully interactive finite element software

Abstract

An object-oriented approach is used to implement a fully interactive finite element program. The program provides rapid response to user changes to the structure. The main features of the design of the program are: (i) an object-oriented distributed data model is used for the finite element objects; (ii) the calculation process is sub-structure-based; (iii) multi-threading (i.e. concurrent processing) is used. The distributed data structure used matches closely the data structure used by the mathematics of the sub-structure-based calculation process, and that of the multi-threading used in the program. The object-oriented approach makes it much easier to exercise control over the calculation processes, both in terms of the algorithms used, and in taking advantage of the multi-threading.