ElmerFEM

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ElmerFEM

Elmer is a multi-physics simulation software developed by CSC. It can perform coupled mechanical, thermal, fluid, electro-magnetic simulations and can be extended by own equations.

Some useful links:

How to cite:

CSC – IT CENTER FOR SCIENCE LTD., 2020. Elmer, Available at: https://www.csc.fi/web/elmer/.



Loading the module

To use ElmerFEM the module needs to be loaded

module load rocky8-spack    
module load elmerfem/9.0-gcc-10.3.0-netlib-lapack-qjdi

This makes the following main commands ElmerGrid, ElmerSolver available and ElmerGUI can be used with X11 forwarding or in an OnDemand desktop session to setup the case file. The use of ElmerGUI to run simulations is not recommended.



Running a tutorial case (quick-start for the impatient)

  1. Copy the tutorial directory (here the linear elastic beam) and go into it:

     cp -r /share/apps/HPC2/ElmerFEM/tutorials-CL-files/ElasticEigenValues/ linear-elastic-beam-tutorial
 cd linear-elastic-beam-tutorial

  2. Start an interactive session on a node

     srun -t 2:00:00 --pty bash

  3. Create the mesh

     ElmerGrid d 7 2 mesh.FDNEUT

  4. Run the solver

     ElmerSolver

  5. Postprocessing would be visualizing the eigen_values.vtu file in paraview.



Setting up a simulation (for new users)

The follwing steps are needed to configure a simulation case (mostly on base).

  1. Create geometry in Gmsh, group and name physical volumes and surfaces (can be done on viz).

  2. Create mesh in Gmsh (large meshes can be created from the CLI in a batch job:

     gmsh -3 geometry.geo

  3. Convert the mesh to elmer’s format using ElmerGrid, including scaling if needed:

     ElmerGrid 14 2 geometry.msh -scale 0.001 0.001 0.001
  4. Create a new project in ElmerGUI (can be done on viz).

    • create project

    • load Elmer mesh (point to the created mesh directory)

    • add equation(s)

    • add material(s)

    • add boundary conditions

    • create sif

    • edit & save sif

  5. Edit the case.sif file (mesh directory, some other parameters [e.g. calculate PrincipalStresses] can only be added in the sif file, not in the GUI)

  6. Run simulation:

     srun ElmerSolver

    or create batch file and submit using sbatch.

  7. Postprocessing in ParaView.



An example simulation case from start to finish