Case study visual debugging of finite element codes

• Published in: Proceedings of the conference on Visualization '02 pp. 517 - 520
• Main Authors: Crossno, Patricia, Rogers, David H., Garasi, Christopher J.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC, USA IEEE Computer Society 27-10-2002
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: Applied computing > Document management and text processing > Document capture > Graphics recognition and interpretation; Computing methodologies > Computer graphics; General and reference > Cross-computing tools and techniques > Performance; parallel finite element codes and simulations; visual debugging
• ISBN: 9780780374980; 0780374983
• DOI: 10.5555/602099.602185

We present an innovative application developed at Sandia National Laboratories for visual debugging of unstructured finite element physics codes. Our tool automatically locates anomalous regions, such as inverted elements or nodes whose variable values lie outside a prescribed range, then extracts mesh subsets around these features for detailed examination. The subsets are viewed using color coding of variable values superimposed on the mesh structure. This allows the values and their relative spatial locations within the mesh to be correlated at a glance. Both topological irregularities and hot spots within the data stand out visually, allowing the user to explore the exact numeric values of the grid at surrounding points over time. We demonstrate the utility of this approach by debugging a cell inversion in a simulation of an exploding wire.