On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Vijay S. Mahadevan wrote:

> For simplification, consider 2 physics on the same domain: Consider
> the 3-D heat conduction and a neutron diffusion model (both are
> nonlinear diffusion-reaction equations) which are described over the
> same 3D domain. Now, can I get away with using a single
> EquationSystems object with a single mesh even though the element
> sizes used for different physics could be different ? And since I
> would define 'mesh' to be the representation of the domain using
> different elements, and since the elements used in terms of size and
> type could be different for different physics, these would be
> different meshes. Does that make sense ?

This makes sense, but I don't think it's a situation that we're
currently set up to handle well.  If you want to do explicit or
decoupled implicit solves then you're probably okay with using
multiple EquationSystems with a different Mesh on each (although you
might have to pay more attention to quadrature than usual).  But, if
you want to mix physics from different meshes and solve a linear
system for all variables at once, the problem is more complex than
just storing a different mesh for each variable.  Just getting the
sparsity pattern right would be a non-trivial task, if you're
concerned with memory use then you'll want to use a complex data
structure which "shares" common elements between meshes yet allows
indpendent adaptivity of each, and if you're concerned with
performance then you'll need to create (and maintain through
adaptivity) lookup tables to quickly find elements in one mesh which
overlap an element in another.  libMesh does none of those things.

I think I've only seen one code designed with fully coupled
multiphysics on indpendently refined meshes in mind; a presenter at
last year's Finite Element Rodeo called it "MultiMesh" if I remember
correctly.  I don't know if it's public or what it's other drawbacks
were, but you might see what you can find online.
---
Roy

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