User login

Navigation

You are here

FEBio - a finite element tool for biomechanics

Via Jeff Weiss :

Subject: FEBio - Finite Elements for Biomechanics

It is my pleasure to announce the 1.0 release of the software FEBio, “Finite Elements
for Biomechanics”. FEBio is a nonlinear finite element software package that is
specifically designed to address problems in computational biomechanics. Some of the
features of note include capabilities for contact, rigid bodies and kinematic joints,
nonlinear anisotropic constitutive models, simulation of active contraction,
poroelasticity, element formulations for nearly-incompressible materials and parallel
solution of the linear system of equations. After extensive testing in our lab and with
our collaborators, we are happy to offer this free software to the research community.

FEBio is available through our laboratory our web page at:
http://mrl.sci.utah.edu/software.php
You can preview the User’s Manual here:
http://mrl.sci.utah.edu/uploads/FEBio_um.pdf

FEBio is currently available for WindowsXP, MacOS/X, Suse Linux (64 bit
Opteron/Athlon64) and SGI Altix (64 bit Itanium2). We would be happy to port FEBio to
other Unix/Linux platforms. The FEBio distribution includes the User’s Manual, Theory
Manual and several test problems to verify proper operation.

We are also pleased to announce the 1.0 releases of PreView and PostView – FE
preprocessing and postprocessing software packages that support the use of FEBio, as
well as other FE solvers. These packages are available at the same web page.

We have big plans for FEBio. Our goal is for FEBio to be the first and best choice for
finite element analysis in solid biomechanics. Upcoming new features will include
hyperelastic shell elements, enhanced strain tetrahedral elements, a framework for
representing mixtures with any number of charged or uncharged solutes, and dedicated
forums for user support and discussion. We would be happy to add new constitutive models
to FEBio to support your needs. Because of the modular nature of the C++ code, this is
an easy task. Finally, if you are interested in helping with the development of FEBio,
please contact me about our Developer’s Program.

If you have any specific questions about FEBio that are not answered in the manuals, or
encounter any problems with download, installation or use, please feel free to contact
us and we will do our best to help you out. My contact information is available at our
lab web page.

I am in debt to our lead code developer, Steve Maas, for his outstanding work on this
project over the past year, to Gerard Ateshian of Columbia University for his
collaboration on the poroelasticity implementation, and to our web page developer Wendy
Johnson for designing and implementing the web pages for download site and the database
back-end (www.wasatchwebservices.com).

Jeff Weiss
Director, Musculoskeletal Research Laboratories
Department of Bioengineering, University of Utah
http://mrl.sci.utah.edu
 

Comments

Hi guys,

Is that software open source?

I was wondering whether we can collaborate to the hexahedral mesh generator.

Cheers,

Dorival. 

Dorival,

You should talk directly to Jeff Weiss about the status of the code (open source or otherwise) and on any collaborations you might be interested in.  I am sure he will entertain specific questions.  With the development of excellently behaved tetrahedral elements (by Mike Puso and others) many people are moving away from hexahedral mesh generation.  I would guess that Jeff is also thinking along similar lines. 

 

A promising recent move away from mesh generation has been initiated by Tom Hughes and others on directly using Bezier-Bernstein and other shape approximation functions (that avoid the mesh generation problem and instead use the infrastructure used to build engineering solid models).  I would appreciate it if someone could comment on the status of that work.

Biswajit 

Roozbeh Sanaei's picture

i think research programs must be "easy to develop" in addition to be "easy to use".  is it not better to develop procedures and libraries instead of complete platform?. procedures are really useful and developing new programs is more easier with libraries instead of complete softwares. i think always concentrate on one think is very better than working on all the world. I think Diffpack and Deal.ii are very good examples of this.

Subscribe to Comments for "FEBio - a finite element tool for biomechanics"

Recent comments

More comments

Syndicate

Subscribe to Syndicate
Error | iMechanica

Error

The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.