Novice question — where to begin

General discussion about Elmer
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ap948
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Joined: 26 Jul 2017, 11:42
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Novice question — where to begin

Post by ap948 »

Hi,

I am an undergraduate, working at my university's physics department over the summer. My work is on surface acoustic waves (SAW) and their application in electron transport, and I intend on using Elmer to model SAW propagation in multilayered structures. (I previously used COMSOL's Multiphysics software, but was quite dissatisfied with the black box approach — I would much rather read/write the actual code for the equations and boundary conditions!) Hopefully, I will be able to contribute anything new that I write to the project.

The documentation seems rather vast, however; it would be very helpful to get some advice on where to begin, given the particular application (Laplace and wave equations in frequency and time domains) I have in mind.

Thanks!
mzenker
Posts: 1999
Joined: 07 Dec 2009, 11:49
Location: Germany

Re: Novice question — where to begin

Post by mzenker »

Hi,

I am no expert in acoustics simulation, but to get acquainted to the software, there are the following documents to consult:

* Solver Manual for general information about the solver and its possibilities,
* Models Manual for documentation about the specific solvers,
* ElmerGUI Manual for a description of the GUI,
* Tutorials for some "hands on" exercises.

For preprocessing, the current recommenations in the Open Source world are gmsh or Salomé.
For postprocessing, ParaView is by far the leading software. gmsh can also do some postprocessing.

There are quite some threads about acoustics in this forum, so a search can here might give you useful information.

HTH,

Matthias
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