PDE Toolbox

Solving Partial Differential Equations Using scilab, B. Sc theses, IUT, 2006.

n this project, we tried to solve PDEs, specifically heat equation, using scilab. Scilab is an open source software developed by INREA which has several matrix calculation abilities comparable to MATLAB. In the end of the project, a toolbox was designed for scilab which was named the PDE- Toolbox.

This project consisted of several programming stages:

The first stage was to develop an engine to generate mesh, apply boundary conditions and solve the corresponding PDE. This stage was implemented using the MODULEF which is a library of 3000 procedures written in FORTRAN 77. This part of the engine reads and writes all the input-output data to files, so that all the data can be used for future reference. It also, performs all the computations to generate mesh, and solve the PDEs.

Some of the mesh generation abilities of the toolbox are:

The second step was to interface the engine with the scilab engine so that the engine can be called inside scilab. This steps consisted of several steps of interfacing and calling either FORTRAN procedures or linux external programs inside scilab.

The third step was to develop a graphical user interface for the toolbox. This graphical user interface was developed using Tcl/Tk programming. The Tcl/Tk programs was later interfaced with scilab to facilitate input-output procedures.

You can see some of the graphical interface windows below:


main menu

The fourth step was to develop some tools for drawing the geometry or the domain of the solution. This step was done using the graphical properties of scilab. All drawing tools were designed within the scope of the project.


Drawing Tools Menue

The last stage was developing the post processing tool. In order to do so, post processing facilities and programs were developed using MODULEF library and were interfaced with the scilab engine.

Click here to see sample output.