SLFFEA 1.5

                    Copyright (C) 1999-2008 San Le

                    email:     slffea@yahoo.com
                    homepage:  http://slffea.sourceforge.net/


SLFFEA stands for San Le's Free Finite Element Analysis.  It is a package
of scientific software and graphical user interfaces for use in finite element
analysis.  It is written in ANSI C by San Le and distributed under the terms of
the GNU license.  

What's Inside:
-------------

14 of the basic finite elements types:

1.  beam             3-D 2 node beam (Euler-Bernoulli(Non-shear deformable) and Reissner-Mindlin-(shear deformable))
2.  brick            3-D 8 node brick
3.  plate            2-D 3 node plate (added on 11/11/06):
4.  plate            2-D 4 node plate
5.  plate            3-D 3 node plate with membrane properties (added on 11/11/06):
6.  plate            3-D 4 node plate with membrane properties (added on 11/11/06):
7.  quad             2-D 4 node quad - plane stress and plane strain
8.  quad             3-D 4 node quad - plane stress and plane strain membrane (added on 11/11/06):
9.  shell            3-D 3 node doubly curved shell (individual element defined by 3 or 6 nodes)
10  shell            3-D 4 node doubly curved shell (individual element defined by 4 or 8 nodes)
11. tetrahedron      3-D 4 node tetrahedron
12. triangle         2-D 3 node triangle - plane stress and plane strain
13. triangle         3-D 3 node triangle - plane stress and plane strain membrane (added on 11/11/06):
14. truss            3-D 2 node truss
15. wedge            3-D 6 node wedge

6 non-linear large deformation elements using updated Lagrange formulation with
Jaumann Stress Rate:

1. 3-D 8 node brick
2. 2-D and 3-D 4 node quad
3. 3-D 4 node tetrahedron
4. 2-D and 3-D 3 node triangle
5. 3-D 2 node truss
6. 3-D 6 node wedge

And 1 thermal element(added on 5/6/00):

1. 3-D 8 node brick - allows for thermal loads and orthotropy

10 Graphical User Interfaces for each element type.

In the spirit of Unix, I keep the code as specific as possible which means that each
element has its own binary rather than having one big executable handling
all the elements.  This makes the code run much faster and is easier for developers
to add their own elements.


What You'll need:
----------------

1.0   Linux or some form of Unix.

 1.1  Extraction tool, like tar xzvfp.

 1.2  C compiler(you should know where your cc or gcc is located so you can define
      the CC macro in the makefiles.  Just do a:

      which gcc

         or

      which acc

      and then put the path in the Makefile.  For instance, when I do a "which gcc", I get:

            /usr/bin/gcc

      which is how my CC is currently defined.

2.0   Mesa-3.0 (OpenGL for the PC) or higher or Open GL.  You also should install it
      in your /usr/local/ directory. 

3.0   Perl if you would like to use the gui.pl script which is very helpful for GUI
      development.

Installation:
------------

Read the file INSTALL found in this directory.


Wish for the Future:
-------------------

1. Add more elements, especially those of the non-linear large deformation variety.

2. Write Users Guide.

3. Add GUI mesh generators.  

4. Write SLFCFD, San Le's Free Computational Fluid Dynamics.


Contributions:
-------------

All submissions for incorporation into SLFFEA must be GNU.  This includes source
codes, scientific theory, and data files.

Bug reports:
-----------

Check the Update Page at:

    http://slffea.sourceforge.net/update.html

to see if the bug has been reported.  If not, you can send it to me at: slffea@yahoo.com

Acknowledgments:
---------------

I would like to thank the following individuals for their contributions to SLFFEA:

For Inspiration:

    Richard Stallman - Granddaddy of the Free Software Movement
    Linus Torvalds - The the Free Software Movement's prodigal son
    comp.os.linux.setup - One of the most altruistic gatherings in the world.

For Code development:

    Brian Paul - Writer of Mesa upon which SLFFEA's GUI is built.  Thanks for
        making my PC as good as the SGI I used to have at work.
    Philip Winston - Writer of the P-Winston Motion Engine which controls all mouse
        movements.  This is probably the best thing about my GUI.
    Dr. Thomas Hughes - Writer of the classic FEA text "The Finite Element Method".
        SLFFEA's variable naming conventions as well as a few subroutines are
        based on his book.  

General:

    Vinh Le - My brother, for lots of programming advice.
    Mark Preston - Made several requests for added features to my truss code, and
            gave me the first sense that SLFFEA would be a worthwhile project.
    Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla - Good company during late night programming sessions.
    Antony Searle - Posted the subroutine ScreenShot which acts as my screendump.
    Brendan J. Green -  Posted the subroutine printText which draws the control
        panel text.

Web Pages which thought my early simple truss code was worth linking to:

    The INTERNET FINITE ELEMENT RESOURCES page -
            http://www.engr.usask.ca/~macphed/finite/ fe_resources/fe_resources.html
    SAL - Scientific Applications on Linux -
            http://SAL.KachinaTech.COM/ 
    FEMur - Finite Element Method universal resource -
            http://me.wpi.edu/FEMurMirror/Resources-On-WWW/FEM-Codes/


San Le
slffea@yahoo.com