Re: Octave PDE initial value problem solvers

[Robert A. Macy]

Neil,

Impressive undertaking.  Won't the salt distribution
influence the evaporation rate, too?  Are you going after
3D, or 2d?

Anyway, you mentioned finite element analyses.  There is an
open source finite element package for magnetics and
electrostatics, called femm 4.0  Femm will do 2D planar, or
3D axisymmetric modeling.  Studying that for techniques and
mesh generation may help.  I think it's in C or C++, but
should be educational.  You'll have to check on any
licensing incompatibility with octave.  

Good luck.

           - Robert -


On Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:31:41 +0800
 <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I need to put together a model that describes how
> moisture and salts
> move through a layer of unsaturated mud as it dries (by
> evaporation off
> the top, and by drainage out the bottom).  I'll start by
> trying to get a
> moisture transport model working, then will worry about
> coupling the
> salt equation.  At some point I'll also need to concern
> myself with
> volume changes as the mud dries out.  I'm going to start
> by trying to
> numerically solve the "Richards Equation", which is a
> nonlinear
> parabolic equation.  The usual way to solve this seems to
> be to use a
> Galerkin-type finite element scheme - something I need to
> read up on.
> 
> Anyway, I'm wondering if anybody knows of publicly
> available Octave code
> that might be useful to me?  I'll only be working on a 1D
> model.
> 
> As somebody who used to use Matlab (though in signal
> processing and
> control, not for solving equations) at uni, I've decided
> that using
> Octave should get me started faster then trying to use
> C++ or Delphi...
> 
> Thanks,
> Neil



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