PELLPACK: A Problem-Solving Environment for PDE-Based Applications on Multicomputer Platforms

This paper presents the software architecture and implementation of the problem solving environment (PSE) PELLPACK for modeling physical objects described by partial differential equations (PDEs). The scope of this PSE is broad as PELLPACK incorporates many PDE solving systems and some of these, in turn, include several specific PDE solving methods. Its coverage for 1-D, 2-D and 3-D elliptic or parabolic problems is quite broad, and it handles some hyperbolic problems. Since a PSE should provide complete support for the problem solving process, PELLPACK also contains a large amount of code to support graphical user interfaces, analytic tools, user help, domain or mesh partitioning, machine and data selection, visualization, and various other tasks. Its total size is well over 1 million lines of code. Its open-ended software architecture consists of several software layers. The top layer is an interactive graphical interface for specifying the PDE model and its solution framework. Thi...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 1998
• Where: TOMS
• Authors: Elias N. Houstis, John R. Rice, Sanjiva Weerawarana, Ann Christine Catlin, P. N. Papachiou, Ko-Yang Wang, M. Gaitatzes
• Keywords: PDE Problem, PDE Solving Systems, Solution Framework, TOMS 1998