deal.II is a free, open-source library to solve partial differential equations using the

finite element method The finite element method (FEM) is a popular method for numerically solving differential equations arising in engineering and mathematical modeling. Typical problem areas of interest include the traditional fields of structural analysis, heat ...

. The current release is version 9.4, released in June 2022. It is one of the most widely used finite element libraries, and provides comprehensive support for all aspects of the solution of partial differential equations. The founding authors of the project — Wolfgang Bangerth, Ralf Hartmann, and Guido Kanschat — won the 2007

J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software The J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software is awarded every four years to honor outstanding contributions in the field of numerical software. The award is named to commemorate the outstanding contributions of James H. Wilkinson in the same f ...

for deal.II. However, it is today a worldwide project with around a dozen "Principal Developers", to which over the years several hundred people have contributed substantial pieces of code or documentation.

Features

The library features * dimension independent programming using

C++ templates C, or c, is the third Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphabet#Le ...

on locally adapted meshes, * a large collection of different finite elements of any order: continuous and discontinuous Lagrange elements, Nedelec elements, Raviart-Thomas elements, and combinations, * parallelization using multithreading through TBB and massively parallel using MPI. deal.II has been shown to scale to at least 16,000 processors and has been used in applications on up to 300,000 processor cores. *

multigrid method In numerical analysis, a multigrid method (MG method) is an algorithm for solving differential equations using a hierarchy of discretizations. They are an example of a class of techniques called multiresolution methods, very useful in problems exhi ...

with local smoothing on adaptively refined meshes *

hp-FEM hp-FEM is a general version of the finite element method (FEM), a numerical method for solving partial differential equations based on piecewise-polynomial approximations that employs elements of variable size ''(h)'' and polynomial degree ' ...

* extensive documentation and tutorial programs, * interfaces to several libraries including Gmsh, PETSc,

Trilinos Trilinos is a collection of open-source software libraries, called ''packages'', intended to be used as building blocks for the development of scientific applications. The word "Trilinos" is Greek and conveys the idea of "a string of pearls", sugg ...

METIS Metis or Métis may refer to: Ethnic groups * Métis, recognized Indigenous communities in Canada and America whose distinct culture and language emerged after early intermarriage between First Nations peoples and early European settlers, prima ...

, VTK, p4est,

BLAS Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) is a specification that prescribes a set of low-level routines for performing common linear algebra operations such as vector addition, scalar multiplication, dot products, linear combinations, and matrix ...

LAPACK LAPACK ("Linear Algebra Package") is a standard software library for numerical linear algebra. It provides routines for solving systems of linear equations and linear least squares, eigenvalue problems, and singular value decomposition. It als ...

HDF5 Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) is a set of file formats (HDF4, HDF5) designed to store and organize large amounts of data. Originally developed at the U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, it is supported by The HDF Group, a non- ...

NetCDF NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) is a set of software libraries and self-describing, machine-independent data formats that support the creation, access, and sharing of array-oriented scientific data. The project homepage is hosted by the Unidat ...

, and Open Cascade Technology.

History and Impact

The software started from work at the Numerical Methods Group at

Heidelberg University } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, B ...

in Germany in 1998. The first public release was version 3.0.0 in 2000. Since then deal.II has gotten contributions from several hundred authors and has been used in more than 2,000 research publications. The primary maintainers, coordinating the worldwide development of the library, are today located at Colorado State University,

Clemson University Clemson University () is a public land-grant research university in Clemson, South Carolina. Founded in 1889, Clemson is the second-largest university in the student population in South Carolina. For the fall 2019 semester, the university enr ...

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research an ...

and a number of other institutions. It is developed as a worldwide community of contributors through

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...

that incorporates several hundred changes by dozens of authors every month.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.dealii.org/
Source Code on Github
Free computer libraries Differential calculus Finite element software for Linux C++ numerical libraries Software that uses VTK

Features

History and Impact

See also

References

External links