2D-automatic composition of nodal values from numerical model using script programming

Abstract

There are many commercial software to perform numerical modeling based on finite element (FEM) and finite difference (FDM) methods. It is often a requirement to the designer, that the values of the individual nodes in the numerical model are known. Usually, these softwares provide two methods to achieve this; firstly, by clicking directly onto the nodes of interest and secondly, by saving or exporting the whole nodal values to an external file. The former way is appropriate for models with small number of nodes, but as the number of nodes increases, it is no longer an efficient or effective way. Through the latter method, all nodal values are obtained, however the values are one-dimensional, and in some cases, only certain nodal values are required for presentation. In this paper, an algorithm for automatic composition of nodal values obtained from the second method mentioned above. The composed nodal values will be in two-dimensional form as this is the format used for uniform shaped model (square or rectangular). Since numerical softwares usually have facilities to save the data in a spreadsheet format, the proposed algorithm is implemented in this environment by using spreadsheet script programming