A software library has been developed for adaptive refinement of unstructured (that is, irregular) tetrahedral or triangular meshes that define two- or three-dimensional coordinates or volume elements used in parallel (that is, multiprocessor) finite-element or finite-volume computations. This library contains a suite of well-designed and efficiently implemented software modules that perform the operations of typical parallel adaptive-mesh-refinement (AMR) processes. An especially notable one of these operations is mesh quality control, typically guided by a local-error estimator, during successive parallel adaptive refinements. Another is balancing of computational loads among parallel processors. The library is robust and is scalable to different numbers of processors. The software in this library was developed in Fortran 90, plus a message-passing interface (MPI) sublibrary. The design of this library supports code efficiency, modularity, and portability. At present, the library is in use on a Cray T3E and SGI Origin computers and on a Beowulf-class cluster of personal computers.

This program was written by John Z. Lou and Charles Norton of Caltech for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For further information, access the Technical Support Package (TSP) free on-line at www.techbriefs.com/tsp under the Software category.

This software is available for commercial licensing. Please contact Don Hart of the California Institute of Technology at (818) 393-3425. Refer to NPO-20948.



This Brief includes a Technical Support Package (TSP).
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Software for Parallel Adaptive Refinement of Meshes

(reference NPO-20948) is currently available for download from the TSP library.

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