What's new in FEFLOW 7.2?

FEFLOW 7.2 features a range of new and improved functionalities. This page presents the highlights of the new release in an overview of the most important new features and improvements:

• Material properties
• Additional map support
• New Auxiliary Parameters
• Processes and Numerical Solutions
• Support or different Python Interpreter versions
• Multi-document operation
• New Features in FePEST
• New SAMG solver version
• Programming Interfaces IFM & Python functions Menu

Time-dependent Expression-Based Parameter Assignment

Classically, Time-dependent Expression-Based Parameter Assignment during the simulation run have been supported for In-/outflow on top/bottom and Source / sink related parameters. To enable new software applications such as hydro-mechanical coupling for granular media, adaptation of conductivity and porosity (e.g. as a function of state-dependent process variables) among others we extended the dynamical parameter assignment of additional parameters. The following parameters can be dynamically assigned:

 

Parameter	2D Horizontal Unconfined	2D Horizontal Confined	2D Vertical Confined	2D Vertical Richards	3D Richards	3D Phreatic
Hydraulic conductivity or transmissivity	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Drain-/fillable porosity	✓	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	✓
Unsaturated flow porosity	n/a	n/a	n/a	✓	✓	n/a
Specific storage coefficient	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Porosity (mass, heat, age species)	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Source / sink (fluid, mass, heat, age species)	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

Additional map support

• Support of MIKE21 FM mesh files:
  To account for an increasing demand of coupling groundwater flow and surface water a MIKE 21 mesh file (*.mesh) can be imported as a 2D Supermesh and as a map.

• Support of GOCAD Tetrahedralized solids:
  To extend the features for importing geological models, GOCAD Tetrahedralized solids (*.so) can now be imported as a 3D Supermesh

• Additional functionality with VTU data:
  2D and 3D vtu-file meshes can now be directly opened to represent FEFLOW supported mesh element types. Apart from opening vtu-files directly, the existing import function will been extended to include additional meta data and field data, and export to vtu will also be available.

New Auxiliary Parameters

Additional Auxiliary Parameters are enriched as a quality control for meshing:

• Aspect ratio gamma: a measure that detects the most common cases of invalid and poor quality elements

• Aspect ratio beta of tetrahedra: the circumsphere radius over 3 times the inscribed sphere radius

• Squish index of tetrahedra: a measure used to quantify how far a tetrahedron deviates from orthogonality w.r.t. its faces

Processes and Numerical Solutions

• New global option allowing the change in fluid storage component to be included in mass and heat budgets for the Convective Form of the Transport Equation. The option has been made accessible through a global switch, for some cases may display budget differences compared to previous runs

• Borehole Heat Exchangers can now be of arbitrary orientation in any type of 3D mesh (layered-based, partially- or fully-unstructured)

Support or different Python Interpreter versions

Since the Python API release, we observe a significant increase of FEFLOW users who automatize their daily workflows. To account for a fast-paced development of the Python Data Science Stack we now support Python versions 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 in addition to the existing Python 2.7.

Multi-document operation

• Possibility to work with multiple FEM documents through the Python interface
  The FEFLOW Python API is often used to transfer data from one model to another model. Until now the workflow contained several steps consisting of loading the first document (e.g. fem-file), retrieving the data, loading the second document and assigning the data to the second document. When the second document is opened, the first document was closed automatically. This workflow required data in memory. Multi-document operation allows you to directly retrieve data from one model and assign it to multiple other models with less memory effort.

• Feature extends software functionality for coupled simulations (e.g. steady-state and transient, local and regional models), among others

New features in FePEST

• Automatic definition of observation weights depending on current observation values and/or FEFLOW confidence intervals

• Option to save the FEFLOW Result file (.dac or .dar)

New SAMG solver

• SAMG2017 version is now supported as new default version next to SAMG28

• SAMG2017 behaves as SAMG28 with enhanced robustness and stability

• Symmetric matrices solved with SAMG28 and/or SAMG2017 now use an on-the-fly matrix bandwidth reduction method as default, for the option proved to generate strong speed-ups in most cases

New IFM functions

API functions for handling multiple-documents (for Python only):

IfmGetProblemDescription
getNumberOfDocuments
getDocument

New Problem Settings related functions:

IfmGetProblemDescription
IfmGetReferenceTime
IfmSetReferenceTime

New budget / content functions:

IfmBudgetComponentsQueryFlowAtNode2
IfmBudgetComponentsQueryMassAtNode2
IfmBudgetComponentsQueryHeatAtNode2
IfmGetTotalContent2
IfmGetElementalContent2

New exit-probability budget analysis function:

IfmGetProtectionZone

New functions for retrieving mesh items:

IfmGetNumberOfEdges
IfmQueryEdgeNodes
IfmQueryEdgeElements
IfmGetNumberOfFaces
IfmQueryFaceNodes
IfmQueryFaceElements

New functions for observation points:

IfmGetObsLabel
IfmSetObsLabel
IfmFindObsByLabel

New functions for selections:

IfmGetSelectionItemCount
IfmEnumSelectionItems2