[Tochnog-users] getting started : new material models, etc.

[todd d. <tc...@bm...>]

Dear TOCHNOG users,

Firstly, thanks to Osman, for uploading latest release, and others, who 
helped me build the manuals!

I have successfully compiled and run the program for the examples, and am 
getting things going well ! 
I am so far very impressed with this program. Even though I am new to C++, I 
can follow things pretty well.

Please forgive me for this elementary question, but I am interested in 
developing three new capabilities for TOCHNOG.

1. New viscoelastic materials (Quasi-Linear Viscoelasticity, Boltzmann type)
2. Composite materials (anisotropic)
3. more complicated geometry description (e.g., sin wave)

I have carefully looked at the source code for visco.c, etc. but am having 
some problems understanding the basic formulation for this code. I am used to 
structurally based, "displacment method" FEA, programmed in fortran, so im 
getting a slow start.

Could anyone point in the direction of a good reference for this "field" 
method implementation, and/or, some example code to implement different types 
of viscoelastic or composite material models in TOCHNOG?

I would really appreciate any help, and hope to make future contributions 
that may be useful for others.

Thank you,

Todd Doehring, Ph.D.
Research Fellow
Lerner Research Institute
Cleveland Clinic Foundation

Btw: I am trying to develop FE models for soft biological tissue (heart 
valves)... :)