Interactive Geometry Modification of High Performance Finite Element Simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces an interactive, modular pipeline for real-time geometric modifications in high performance finite element simulations, enabling in situ domain editing without costly re-meshing or restarting.

Contribution

It presents a novel server-client architecture that allows in situ geometric modifications during ongoing simulations, improving efficiency and user interaction.

Findings

Enables real-time geometric modifications during simulations.

Maintains high performance with refined domains on client side.

Supports integration with existing finite element frameworks.

Abstract

In the context of high performance finite element analysis, the cost of iteratively modifying a computational domain via re-meshing and restarting the analysis becomes time prohibitive as the size of simulations increases. In this paper, we demonstrate a new interactive simulation pipeline targeting high performance finite element simulations where the computational domain is modifiable in situ, that is, while the simulation is ongoing. This pipeline is designed to be modular so that it may interface with any existing finite element simulation framework. A server-client architecture is employed to manage simulation mesh data existing on a high performance computing resource while user-prescribed freeform geometric modifications take place on a separate workstation. We employ existing in situ visualization techniques to rapidly inform the user of simulation progression, enabling computational steering. By expressing the simulation domain in a reduced fashion on the client application, this pipeline manages highly refined finite element simulation domains on the server while maintaining good performance on the client application.