Development of an object-oriented finite element program with adaptive mesh refinement for multi-physics applications

In this paper, an object-oriented framework for numerical analysis of multi-physics applications is presented. The framework is divided into several basic sets of classes that enable the code segments to be built according to the type of problem to be solved. Fortran 2003 was used in the development of this finite element program due to its advantages for scientific and engineering programming and its new object-oriented features. The program was developed with h-type adaptive mesh refinement, and it was tested for several classical cases involving heat transfer, fluid mechanics and structural mechanics. The test cases show that the adaptive mesh is refined only in the localization region where the feature gradient is relatively high. The overall mesh refinement and the h-adaptive mesh refinement were justified with respect to the computational accuracy and the CPU time cost. Both methods can improve the computational accuracy with the refinement of mesh. The overall mesh refinement causes the CPU time cost to greatly increase as the mesh is refined. However, the CPU time cost does not increase very much with the increase of the level of h-adaptive mesh refinement. The CPU time cost can be saved by up to 90%, especially for the simulated system with a large number of elements and nodes.