Introduction to Finite Element Methods in Engineering

Introduction to Finite Element Methods

Finite element methods are based on the variational formulation of partial differential equations which only need to compute the gradient of a function. Although unknowns are still associated to nodes, the function composed by piece-wise polynomials on each element and thus the gradient can be computed element-wise. Finite element spaces can thus be constructed on general triangulations and thi...

Introduction to Finite Element Methods

In a di erential equations course, one typically studies a few classes of problems for which there are closed form solutions, such as ordinary, linear di erential equations with constant coe cients. Most problems of interest in real world simulation problems are much more complex, however, involving domains of two or more dimensions or nonlinear e ects, yielding partial di erential equations or...

Introduction to Assembly of Finite Element Methods on Graphics Processors

Recently, graphics processing units (GPUs) have had great success in accelerating numerical computations. We present their application to computations on unstructured meshes such as those in finite element methods. Multiple approaches in assembling and solving sparse linear systems with NVIDIA GPUs and the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) are presented and discussed. Multiple strategi...

Introduction to Finite Element Methods on Elliptic Equations

1. Poisson Equation 1 2. Outline of Topics 3 2.1. Finite Difference Method 3 2.2. Finite Element Method 3 2.3. Finite Volume Method 3 2.4. Sobolev Spaces and Theory on Elliptic Equations 3 2.5. Iterative Methods: Conjugate Gradient and Multigrid Methods 3 2.6. Nonlinear Elliptic Equations 3 2.7. Fast Multiple Method 3 3. Physical Examples 4 3.1. Gauss’ law and Newtonian gravity 4 3.2. Electrost...

Introduction to (dis)continuous Galerkin finite element methods