Past Event: Oden Institute Seminar

The EXHUME Project for Democratization of Immersed Finite Element Analysis

John Evans, Associate Professor, the Jack Rominger Faculty Fellow, Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder.

Abstract

Immersed finite element methods allow for the simulation of physical systems that are difficult if not impossible to simulate using classical finite element methods. For instance, immersed finite element methods can be applied to the simulation of blood flow past the heart valves between the four main chambers of the human heart as well as the movement of blood cells through a human capillary. Immersed finite element methods also streamline the construction of computational design optimization technologies that optimize the geometry and material layout of an engineered system based on prescribed performance metrics. However, the computer implementation of an immersed finite element method remains a challenging and time-consuming task even for domain experts.
 
The EXHUME (EXtraction for High-order Unfitted finite element MEthods) software library was specifically introduced to ease the burden of implementing immersed finite element methods. In particular, EXHUME enables one to transform classical finite element codes into immersed finite element codes with minimal implementation effort, empowering a larger community of scientists and engineers to employ immersed finite element methods in their own work. This talk will begin with an introduction to interpolation-based immersed finite element analysis, the key technology behind the EXHUME software project. The efficacy of interpolation-based immersed finite element analysis will then be illustrated using example problems from heat conduction, structural mechanics, and fluid mechanics. Finally, the EXHUME software tools for generating the data structures necessary to perform interpolation-based finite element analysis will be presented, as well as how these tools have been leveraged to enable interpolation-based finite element analysis within the popular open-source finite element analysis platform FEniCS. This talk is based on joint work with Jennifer Fromm, Ru Xiang, Han Zhao, and David Kamensky of the University of California San Diego and Nils Wunsch and Kurt Maute of the University of Colorado Boulder.
 

Biography

John Evans is an Associate Professor and the Jack Rominger Faculty Fellow in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.  His research interests lie at the intersection of computational mechanics, geometry, and approximation theory, with current thrusts in isogeometric analysis, immersogeometric analysis, interactive simulation, and data-driven modeling.  He has won a number of awards for his research and teaching including the 2021 Gallagher Young Investigator Award from the United States Association for Computational Mechanics and the 2021 AIAA Rocky Mountain Educator of the Year (College/University), and he is currently Associate Editor of the journal Engineering with Computers.