| Original author(s) | Hans-Jörg G. Diersch |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | DHI Group |
| Operating system | Linux,Microsoft Windows |
| Type | FEM software |
| License | proprietary |
| Website | www |
FEFLOW (Finite Element subsurface FLOW system) is a computer program forsimulatinggroundwaterflow,mass transfer andheat transfer inporous media and fractured media. The program usesfinite element analysis to solve thegroundwater flow equation of both saturated and unsaturated conditions as well as mass and heat transport, includingfluiddensity effects andchemical kinetics formulti-component reaction systems.
The software was firstly introduced by Hans-Jörg G. Diersch in 1979, see[1] and.[1] He developed the software in the Institute of Mechanics of theGerman Academy of Sciences Berlin up to 1990. In 1990 he was one of the founders of WASY GmbH ofBerlin,Germany (the acronym WASY translates from German toInstitute for Water Resources Planning and Systems Research), where FEFLOW has been developed further, continuously improved and extended as a commercial simulation package. In 2007 the shares of WASY GmbH were purchased byDHI. The WASY company has been fused and FEFLOW became part of the DHI Group software portfolio. FEFLOW is being further developed at DHI by an international team. Software distribution and services are worldwide.
The program is offered in both32-bit and64-bit versions forMicrosoft Windows andLinux operating systems.
FEFLOW's theoretical basis is fully described in the comprehensiveFEFLOW book.[1] It covers a wide range of physical and computational issues in the field of porous/fractured-media modeling. The book starts with a more general theory for all relevant flow and transport phenomena on the basis of thecontinuum mechanics, systematically develops the basic framework for important classes of problems (e.g., multiphase/multispecies non-isothermal flow and transport phenomena, variably saturatedporous media, free-surfacegroundwater flow, aquifer-averaged equations, discrete feature elements), introducesfinite element methods for solving the basic multidimensional balance equations, in detail discusses advanced numerical algorithms for the resulting nonlinear and linear problems, and completes with a number ofbenchmarks, applications and exercises to illustrate the different types of flow, mass and heat transport problems (e.g., subsurface flow andseepage problems, unsaturated-saturated flow, advective-diffusion transport,saltwater intrusion,geothermal andthermohaline flow).