Over the past 15 years the Applied Modelling and Computation Group has been actively developing advanced numerical methods for the solution of a wide variety of physical phenomena in engineering and physical sciences.

These phenomena include the radiation exchange between clouds; oceanographic flows; transient nuclear system behaviour; and multiphase flows in fluidised beds. This research has culminated in the development of two main finite element based codes:

  • Fluidity an open-source, CFD modelling application
  • EVENT for even-parity radiation transport modelling
  • FETCH/FETCH2 for first-order, coupled radiation transport modelling

These software modelling tools represent the state of the art in finite element methods development, and utilise the latest advanced iterative solution techniques.

Find out more about our software

EVENT - even-parity radiation transport modelling

The code EVENT is a general purpose finite element neutral particle radiation transport code and has been used to model radiation exchange in atmospheres, complex radiation shielding problems and near infrared optical tomography. EVENT also forms the radiation module of the coupled radiation/hydrodynamics code FETCH, used for modelling the criticality of fissile solutions.

More information about EVENT

OpenTidalFarm

OpenTidalFarm is an open-source optimisation software for tidal turbine farms.

The positioning of the turbines in a tidal farm is a crucial decision. Simulations show that the optimal positioning can increase the power generation of the farm by up to 50% and can therefore determine the viability of a project. However, finding the optimal layout is a difficult process due to the complex flow interactions. OpenTidalFarm solves this problem by applying an efficient optimisation algorithm onto an accurate flow prediction model.

FETCH - finite element transient criticality

The code FETCH was developed in order to model coupled fluid/radiation processes, such as criticality accidents involving fissile solutions, porous media and granular material - together with large-scale coupled behaviour of innovative nuclear reactors. FETCH consists of three modules: a radiation module EVENT; a fluids module Fluidity and a linking module which provides the interface between the radiation and fluids modules.

Fluidity - computational fluid dynamics on unstructured finite element meshes

Fluidity is an open source, general purpose, multi-phase computational fluid dynamics code capable of numerically solving the Navier-Stokes equation and accompanying field equations on arbitrary unstructured finite element meshes in one, two and three dimensions.

It is used in a number of different scientific areas including geophysical fluid dynamics, computational fluid dynamics, ocean modelling and mantle convection. It uses a finite element/control volume method which allows arbitrary movement of the mesh with time dependent problems, allowing mesh resolution to increase or decrease locally according to the current simulated state. It has a wide range of element choices including mixed formulations.

Fluidity is parallelised using MPI and is capable of scaling to many thousands of processors. Other innovative and novel features are a user-friendly GUI and a python interface which can be used to calculate diagnostic fields, set prescribed fields or set user-defined boundary conditions.

QGIS meshing plugins

Realistic domains can be meshed using the QGIS meshing plugins. See the meshing pages for further details.

SOLIDITY Project - FEMDEM Solid Mechanics Software

From the FEMDEM modelling group, part of the Applied Modelling and Computation Group (AMCG) at Imperial College London.

Solidity is an Open Source general purpose, two and three dimension finite element – discrete element solid mechanics code. Solidity solves highly non-linear problems for continuum and discontinuous domains.  Features include fracture and fragmentation without the need to seed, a range of finite strain large deformation constitutive models including elasto-plasticity and thermal fields. Parallelisation and fast contact detection and interaction algorithms are included. The release date for Solidity is planned for early 2017.

Spud - Generalising and automating user interfaces for scientific computer models

Spud is a generic system for defining, writing and processing options files for scientific computer models.