454.calculix
Guido D.C. Dhondt <dhondt [at] t-online.de>
Structural Mechanics
454.calculix is based on CalculiX, which is a free software finite element code for linear and nonlinear three-dimensional structural applications. It uses the classical theory of finite elements described in books such as the work by O.C. Zienkiewicz and R.L. Taylor, "The Finite Element Method", Fourth Edition, McGraw Hill, 1989. CalculiX can be used to solve a variety of problems such as static problems (bridge and building design), buckling, dynamic applications (crash, earthquake resistance) and eigenmode analysis (resonance phenomena).
CalculiX consists of two parts: CalculiX GraphiX, used for generating an input file interactively and for visualization of the results, and CalculiX CrunchiX, which sets up the finite element equations and solves them. The module submitted as benchmark 454.calculix is CalculiX CrunchiX.
The input basically consists of a mesh describing the geometry of the structure, material properties, geometric boundary conditions and natural boundary conditions. The mesh is made up of elements containing nodes in which the solution is to be determined. The material properties describe the type of material the structure is made of. Examples of material behavior are linear elastic (e.g. steel at low stress), hyperelastic (rubber materials) and elastoplastic behavior (steel at high stress). The geometric boundary conditions specify which parts of the structure are constrained. For instance, a cantilever beam is fixed at one end. This fixation is described by specifying that the displacements at that end are zero. Finally, the natural boundary conditions are the loads applied to the structure such as pressure loads, centrifugal loading, temperature loading etc.
For the input, several keyword lines are provided. For instance, the description of the nodes is started by the *NODE keyword line, followed on the next line by the node number and the node's coordinates in three-dimensional Euclidean space. The element topology is started by an *ELEMENT keyword line, etc. For a detailed description of the keyword lines the reader is referred to the extensive documentation of CalculiX CrunchiX available in 454.calculix/Docs/calculix.pdf; or updated versions of documents available for download at www.dhondt.de
Usually, the geometry, the material description and the zero geometric boundary conditions are put at the top of the file. Then follow one or more steps containing the nonzero geometric boundary conditions and the natural boundary conditions.
The reference example (input file: hyperviscoplastic.inp) provided with the benchmark describes the deformation of a compressor disk due to centrifugal load, i.e. the compressor disk is rotated at high speed and the deformation and stresses in the disk are analyzed. Only a segment describing one seventh of the disk was modelled. The other six seventh are taken into account by cyclic symmetry conditions. The material of the disk is a combination of linear elastic, viscoelastic, Ogden-type and Ramberg-Osgood-type material. Target of the calculation is the displacement and stress field at full speed.
The output consists of variable fields across the structure, usually the displacements and the stresses. Output can be requested with the keyword lines *NODE PRINT and *EL PRINT in the input file, in which case the results are stored in the .dat file, or with *NODE FILE and *EL FILE lines. In the latter case the results are stored in the .frd file for visualization with CalculiX GraphiX.
The displacement results in the .dat file are preceded by the line "displacements (vx,vy,vz)" and consist of a list of nodes and the components of the displacement vector in Euclidean space, one node per line.
The stresses (heading: stresses (elem, integ.pnt.,sxx,syy,szz,sxy,sxz,syz)) are listed in the integration points of the elements. To explain the concept of integration points, note that an element can be visualized as a deformed cube. The finite element method involves integration over this cube, which is numerically performed by function evaluation in so-called integration points. Stresses are most accurately evaluated at these integration points. The stress results in the .dat file consist of the element number, the integration point number and the six stress components (the stress is a second-order tensor).
454.calculix is written in a mixture of Fortran 90 and C. The Fortran parts do not use all capabilities of Fortran 90. Indeed, they are more like Fortran 77 with some extra features such as "exit" and "cycle" of Fortran 90. The Fortran used in CalculiX CrunchiX is compatible with the GNU Fortran compiler. The programming language C is used for dynamic allocation.
The idea of a pure C-language program was rejected because of the large Fortran experiences of the author. A pure Fortran 90 language program was rejected because no good free Fortran 90 compiler existed. So, that's how the mix came into being.
SPOOLES, the mathematical code to solve the set of linear equations generated by CalculiX CrunchiX, is written entirely in C.
By default, 454.calculix expects that your compiler supports the C99 format %zd. If yours does not, you will notice that the file SPECtestformatmodifier_z.txt will not validate. In such cases, please try compiling with -DSPEC_CPU_NOZMODIFIER
Last updated: 29 June 2006