2020

RIGA TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering & Transport Technology

Engineering Mechanics Problems

Presentation and report Topic:

Non-commercial or open source finite element software

Developed by: Gokul Manju Santhoshkumar

Ahmed AlNaser
Olimkhon Askarov
Vatsal Mandlesara

Riga
2020

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 3

GNU Octave 3

Scientific Publications from Scopus with major GNU OCTAVE calculations 4

1. Development and validation of an inverse method for identification

of thermal characteristics of a short laser pulse 4

2. Cosmogenic soil production rate calculator 4

General Conclusion 5

References 5

Introduction

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Noncommercial software is a software that is made with the idea of not making
money off the product or in other words, commercializing it. Open source software is
software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance. This
enables the users to change and modify the program to suit their particular needs.
Finite element analysis (FEA) is a computerized method for predicting how a product
reacts to real-world forces, vibration, heat, fluid flow, and other physical effects.
Given these characteristics, the software we have chosen to work on is GNU
OCTAVE

GNU OCTAVE

GNU Octave is software featuring a high-level programming language, primarily

intended for numerical computations. Octave helps in solving linear and nonlinear
problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a
language that is mostly compatible with MATLAB. It may also be used as a batch-
oriented language. Since it is part of the GNU Project, it is free software under the
terms of the GNU General Public License.

 Octave is written in C++ using the C++ standard library.

 Octave uses an interpreter to execute the Octave scripting language.
 Octave is extensible using dynamically loadable modules.
 Octave interpreter has an OpenGL-based graphics engine to create plots,
graphs and charts and to save or print them. Alternatively, gnu plot can be
used for the same purpose.
 Octave includes a Graphical User Interface (GUI) in addition to the traditional
Command Line Interface (CLI)

Octave programs consist of a list of function calls or a script. The syntax is matrix-
based and provides various functions for matrix operations. It supports various data
structures and allows object-oriented programming.

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Scientific Publications from Scopus with major GNU OCTAVE

calculations

1. Development and validation of an inverse method for identification of

thermal characteristics of a short laser pulse

This article was written by Łapka, P, Pietrak, K, Kujawińska M, Malesa M from the
Institute of Heat Engineering and Institute of Micromechanics and Photonics
belonging to Warsaw University of Technology. This article was published in Jan
2020.

Aim: Form an inverse method for identifying the power of a short laser pulse when it
is acting on a metal plate. It was also used for finding dimensionless shape
parameter of the super-Gaussian function describing the spatial energy distribution
of the beam as well as beginning and end times of its interaction with the heated
body.

Method: The power, the laser beam spatial profile, beginning and end times of the
exposition as well as thermo-physical and optical parameters of the aluminum
sample were known. The measured data were used for both validation of the
numerical model which described thermal interaction of a laser pulse with the sample
as well as accuracy of the inverse method. At the first step, numerical model of the
heat transfer in the aluminum sample irritated by the laser pulse, was developed and
validated based on experimentally-determined temperature distributions. The
validation was performed for both single and multiple laser pulses. The numerical
model was implemented in the commercial software ANSYS Fluent. Then an inverse
algorithm was developed and implemented with the aid of the GNU Octave
environment.

Conclusion: An algorithm was made using GNU OCTAVE after a model was
implemented using ANSYS FLUENT. Using a laser pulse with known power to
calibrate an algorithm yielding almost the same power gave us a knowhow of how
accurate this algorithmic calculation is. The accuracy was pretty high and this can be
used for measuring laser pulse power calculations. The application include
reinforcing army grade bunkers and shield equipment.

2. Cosmogenic soil production rate calculator.

This article was published with the combined efforts of Scottish University’s
Environmental Research Centre and Lancaster Environment Centre of Lancaster
University United Kingdom.

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Aim: To establish and understand the rate at which soil is formed from the bedrock.
The problem with the existing calculation is that there is an assumption stating that
the erosion rate is constant. It is also assumed that the bulk density of the soil
remains the same as that of the bed rock or is constant with depth. The problem with
this assumption is that soils with lower densities will not have a constant bulk density
with depth leading to faulty calculations.

Method: Cosmogenic radionuclides are radioactive isotope formed during the

erosion of the bedrock to yield soil. These aren’t harmfully radioactive. The core of
the already existing calculations are based on the measurement of the concentration
of the cosmogenic radionuclides. The calculations performed in this article is done
using the measurement of an isotope of the cosmogenic radionuclides. Along with
this, we consider the bulk density of the soil layer overlying the bedrock surface
rather than taking a constant value applicable in different instances. A calculating
algorithm is made with the measured values on GNU OCTAVE and also can be run
on MATLAB.

Conclusion: An algorithm was made using GNU OCTAVE that helps calculate the
erosion rate of soils with lower densities. This is especially helpful in calculating and
understanding fertility of soil. Another application of this is in understanding and
avoiding natural disasters like landslides which occur for soils with high porosity and
low density.

General Conclusion

GNU Octave is a very versatile software for calculating complex numerical

calculations along with formations of functions and algorithm. Given that it is
syntactically the most compatible with MATLAB gives it an added advantage since
MATLAB is a commercial software while GNU OCTAVE is a free software that can
be accessed by all. The fact that the code of an existing program, algorithm or
function can be edited so as to tailor its need to the user makes it even better.

References

1. Development and validation of an inverse method for identification of thermal

characteristics of a short laser pulse by Łapka, P, Pietrak, K, Kujawińska M,
Malesa M from the Institute of Heat Engineering and Institute of
Micromechanics and Photonics belonging to Warsaw University of
Technology Jan 2020.
2. Wikipedia
3. Cosmogenic soil production rate calculator by Scottish University’s
Environmental Research Centre and Lancaster Environment Centre of
Lancaster University United Kingdom.