Advances in Symbolic and Numerical Approaches in Computational Mechanics
Résumé
In this paper, we give a global overview of the latest advances in computational mechanics code design. We give a brief historical perspective of the evolution of finite element code design since the introduction of object-oriented programming in the 90’s. Then, we try to outline the structure of future computational tools. Besides classical architectures applied to multi-fields and multiphysics problems, we present a tentative example of generalization of the discretization scheme to isogeometric analysis, fully integrated in the same variational framework as finite elements. Following, a meta-level of code is developed to manage the variational formulation framework in a symbolic way. This way of thinking about the design of computational tools is expected to open new tracks in the development of codes, offering the natural and fast extendibility capabilities needed in modern engineering.