Re: [Libmesh-devel] libMesh and XFEM?

[Kirk, B. (JSC-EG311) <ben...@na...>]

On Mar 23, 2013, at 5:51 PM, Derek Gaston <fri...@gm...> wrote:

> We've been doing this work in preparation for talking to you and Roy so we would have our ducks in a row for intelligent conversation about what needs to be added to libMesh.  It appears as if that time has now come ;-)
> 
> Let's put together a conference call on this to start a dialog this week.  When are you available?

Excellent.  I'm generically available except 11-1 central Tuesday, and not at all on Friday.

> Does anyone else (Roy? Paul?) want to be on the conference call as well?

I hope so!

Rough questions to guide an outline:

(1) moving vs. static interface?  defines whether we need a transport eqn for a level set function, or if it is just stationary
   - efficient distance calculation in parallel?
(2) material interfaces or discontinuities?  e.g., will the enriched solution space be discontinuous or just account for internal material interfaces?
(3) integration on cut cells?  

Major components it would seem we'd need:

(1) some way to cut a cell and return a collection of subcells (probably simplices?) for integration.  Perhaps this could leverage triangle and tetgen?
(2) a library-level distance function system (not required but would seem useful since the parallelism is probably nontrivial)
(3) a set of  XFEM classes,  perhaps templated on our existing finite element classes, that require the distance function and implement the enrichment?

No need to respond on any details - it's Saturday after all, but I personally wanted to capture some ideas…

-Ben