Dear All, Let me first quickly introduce myself. My name is Marco Nawijn, I am 49 years old and I hold a masters degree in aerospace engineering. I have many years of practical experience in the application of the finite element method in the field of mechanics (plasticity, buckling, damage initiation and progression in composites and so on). I did have a fair amount of theoretical background back in the day, but this certainly needs some refreshing. I do have a pretty solid background in Python/C/C++ programming although I don't have a formal education in these areas. I am currently the manager of the engineering department of Rondal (https://rondal.com) where we design sailing systems for super yachts using commercial FSI (SailPack) and FE (Strand7) packages.
Since a long time however, I feel the urge to open the FE black box so to speak and get more control/insight/understanding of the FE field (theory, limitations, practical issues, solvers and so on). After googling around every now and than, I stumbled across Deal II. And although, a lot of the mathematics is still daunting for me, I really like the quality of the code itself, the available reference documentation, the lecture series and the volume of examples and their in-depth explanations. Up to this point in time, I have been lurking around, but I decided to get my hands and feet dirty and dive in. Before I do so however, I would like to kindly ask for some feedback on what my plans are. The reason I ask is because I am afraid that what I want may not exactly align with the Deal II objectives. What I basically would like to do is, gradually (months/years) develop the necessary functionality to analyse and optimize our sailing systems. The list of topics I am interested in includes (but is not limited to): - Linear elastic static analysis of the rig (mast, spreaders, standing rigging) using 1D elements (beam, truss); - Linear buckling analysis of the rig; - Non-linear buckling analysis (account for effect of cable tensioning on buckling behaviour); - Linear elastic static analysis of the mast using 2D/3D orthotropic elements; - Linear buckling analysis of the mast using 2D/3D orthotropic elements; - Detailed stress analysis of composites (ply-by-ply modelling of composite, visco-elastic modelling of matrix materials); - Calculation of the pressure distribution of a sail using a potential flow solver. - FSI analysis of rig (flow generates pressure on the sail which deforms the mast which alters the shape of the sail which alters the pressure distribution and so on) So basically what I would like to do is use as much functionality as possible from Deal II, implement what is missing and build practical analysis tools out of it. Does this make sense? In terms of a timeline, I will probably start by myself in my own spare time untill I am able to do the beam analysis (first 3 bullet points). This allows me to get enough experience in working with Deal II to also guide master/PHD students. From that point on, some of the additional work will than probably/hopefully be done in cooperation with master/PHD students. As a final note, I am a big fan of open source software. Therefore, I am fully committed to contribute whatever I develop back to the Deal II community including examples/tests/documentation and so on. For example, one of the first things on my list is to expand on the Abaqus input file reader. I have some ideas in this area that I would like to pitch if there is any interest. Another practical thing I can contribute to is testing the compilation of Deal II with different versions of libraries. For example, Deal II will not compile out of the box with newer TBB versions. But I also get a fair amount of warnings of array bounds that (the compiler thinks) are not correct. So if there is an interest to test different configurations (accessible to mortals, because I do not have access to a supercomputing cluster) I am more than happy to get my hands dirty. Any thoughts/ideas/feedback? Marco -- The deal.II project is located at http://www.dealii.org/ For mailing list/forum options, see https://groups.google.com/d/forum/dealii?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "deal.II User Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dealii/2d499998-422d-4cbc-9c85-0871ff22fa49n%40googlegroups.com.
