The LifeV library: engineering mathematics beyond the proof of concept

LifeV is a library for the finite element (FE) solution of partial differential equations in one, two, and three dimensions. It is written in C++ and designed to run on diverse parallel architectures, including cloud and high performance computing facilities. In spite of its academic research nature, meaning a library for the development and testing of new methods, one distinguishing feature of LifeV is its use on real world problems and it is intended to provide a tool for many engineering applications. It has been actually used in computational hemodynamics, including cardiac mechanics and fluid-structure interaction problems, in porous media, ice sheets dynamics for both forward and inverse problems. In this paper we give a short overview of the features of LifeV and its coding paradigms on simple problems. The main focus is on the parallel environment which is mainly driven by domain decomposition methods and based on external libraries such as MPI, the Trilinos project, HDF5 and ParMetis. Dedicated to the memory of Fausto Saleri.Comment: Review of the LifeV Finite Element librar

Parallel implementation of an optimal two level additive Schwarz preconditioner for the 3-D finite element solution of elliptic partial differential equations

This paper presents a description of the extension and parallel implementation of a new two level additive Schwarz (AS) preconditioner for the solution of 3-D elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs). This preconditioner, introduced in Bank et al. (SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 2002; 23: 1818), is based upon the use of a novel form of overlap between the subdomains which makes use of a hierarchy of meshes: with just a single layer of overlapping elements at each level of the hierarchy. The generalization considered here is based upon the restricted AS approach reported in (SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 1999; 21: 792) and the parallel implementation is an extension of work in two dimensions (Concurrency Comput. Practice Experience 2001; 13: 327)