femo

femo is a general framework for using Finite Element in PDE-constrained Multidisciplinary Optimization problems. It relies on FEniCSx to provide solutions and partial derivatives of the PDE residuals, and uses CSDL as the umbrella for coupling and mathematical modeling of the whole problem. The code is still under active developement and we expect it to be available to the public for their research applications by 2023 Winter.

For modeling and simulation, you need to install FEniCSx, CSDL and the Python-based backend of CSDL - python_csdl_backend; for optimization, you will also need ModOpt on top of them for the black-box optimizers.

Installation

It's recommended to use conda for installing the module and its dependencies.

• Create a conda environment for FEniCSx with a specific Python version (Python 3.9) that is compatible with all of the dependencies

  conda create -n fenicsx python=3.9.10
  

  (Python 3.9.7 also works if Python 3.9.10 is unavailable in your conda)
• Activate the conda enviroment

  conda activate fenicsx
  

• Install the latest FEniCSx

  conda install -c conda-forge fenics-dolfinx=0.5.1
  

• Git clone and install CSDL, and python_csdl_backend by pip
• Git clone and install femo by pip
• (optional) Install SNOPT for optimization (licence required)
• (optional) Install ModOpt by pip and test with modopt/modopt/external_packages/csdl/test_scaler.py