FEM project

This is the project plan for the FreeCAD FEM integration as part of the Development roadmap.

Limitation of FEM Workbench
The FEM-Module supports linear analysis of isotropic (uniformity in all directions) material.

Mechanical analysis with calculation of resulting stress (Von Mises) and displacement is supported.

The FEM-module supports analysis of single parts (solids). Multi-body analysis is not implemented yet.

Outcome
Simple FEM chain to start the matter. Which is capable of meshing a Part (automatic) and compute some standard stuff like stiffnes and frequencies.

The framework should allow tetrahedral and hex meshes. Writing the output decks as python plugin to ease use different solver. Simple post-processing with the ability to extend by python.

potential Meshers


Some meshers out there
 * Netgen very good mesher, LGPL with some library suport
 * Salome complicated package, hard to get the code we need!?
 * PythonOCC python library wrapping Salome and Netgen meshers may be the quickest and most complete way to integrate meshers

potential Solvers
some solver out there
 * Calculix
 * Code-Aster very broad solver with python bindings
 * PythonOCC python library that also offers a (currently) rough interface to Code_Aster which would also be a quick way to have a 1st working solution

calculix examples

 * gut example with contact

Mesher

 * Testing the mesh generators by experts
 * Analysing software structure and possible integration

Next actions

 * Setting up Fem_Workbench (done)
 * Starting optimized visuals for SALOME mesh (ongoing)
 * Interface for adding post-processing information (color, displacement) to the Fem Visual. (done)
 * Writing a valid CalculiX INP file.
 * loading FRD (done)