Features¶
- Galerkin discretization of all standard boundary integral operators (single-layer potential, double-layer potential, adjoint double-layer potential, hypersingular operator) for Laplace, Helmholtz, modified Helmholtz and Maxwell problems in three dimensions.
- Numerical evaluation of boundary-element integrals (singular integrals dealt with using Sauter quadrature rules).
- Triangular surface mesh handling. Import of meshes in Gmsh format.
- Polynomial and discontinuous polynomial basis functions of various orders.
- Dense-matrix representation of boundary integral operators supported natively.
- Easy creation of operators composed of several logical blocks.
- Evaluation of potentials in space (away from the discretized surface).
- Built-in H-Matrix assembly of boundary operators and potentials
- High-Frequency OSRC preconditioners for Helmholtz
- Dual grid based operator preconditioning for Laplace and Helmholtz
- Parallel operation on shared-memory CPU architectures.
- Pythonic library interface
- FEM/BEM Coupling with FEniCS.
Changes to Version 2.0¶
Version 3.0 is a major rewrite of BEM++. Most higher-order routines have been redeveloped in Python to provide a better Python integration. H-Matrix compression is now handled by a native built-in library. The dependency on external libraries was reduced and the compilation is now based on standard CMake scripts. While Version 3.0 is an improvement in almost every respect it does not yet have a built-in H-LU decomposition. This is one of the priority areas for the further development of BEM++.
The following table compares the features of version 2.0 with 3.0.
| Feature | Version 2 | Version 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Laplace Kernels | yes | yes |
| Helmholtz Kernels | yes | yes |
| Maxwell Kernels | yes | yes |
| Discontinuous polynomial spaces | yes | yes |
| Continuous polyomial spaces | yes | yes |
| H-Matrices | via AHMED 1.0 | native support |
| Dual Spaces on Barycentric Grids | yes | yes |
| High-Freq. Preconditioning | no | yes |
| FEM/BEM Coupling | no | via FEniCS |
| Grid Management | Foamgrid | any Dune Grid Manager |
| FMM | no | in planning |
| Higher-Order Elements | no | no |
| Python Interface | Swig | Cython |
| Installer | custom | CMake |