ADONIS - A Free Finite Element Program for Geotechnical Engineers

Introduction

As a young student, I was always fascinated by the power of computers and the help that they provide to obtain results that are easy to understand for complex simulations. It was not until 2006 that I was introduced to the world of open source Software and since then I contributed with couple of open source geotechnical programs such as NT-DDA and Opensees both developed at University of California at Berkeley. During this period I realized that although some of the academic geotechnical programs have advanced analysis methods and can be very reliable, the lack of good GUI coupled with a complex modelling procedure may result in the software being ignored by the potential users; its practical capabilities will not be embraced and exploited by the engineering communities. So at the middle of the year 2013, after graduation from school I decided to start my own research project with objective of creating a unified interactive finite element program for geotechnical applications. After almost three years of part-time programming the first version of ADONIS has been released.

The objective of ADONIS is to eventually offer to engineers and teachers a service similar to that of integrated commercial packages. The development of ADONIS is ongoing. New element formulations, contact algorithms, and constitutive equations are being implemented and will become available in future versions. Continued emphasis will be placed on support and dissemination of ADONIS in the form of documentation of the software and its example problems, online manuals, and on online forum. I hope that this free finite element framework using modern software design principles will not only provide a new and useful tool for computational geomechanics, but also set a new standard for computational simulation software in this field.

ADONIS is written in the object-oriented programming (OOP) language C++ using the Qt, a cross-platform application framework. Qt offers a lot of the generic, low-level functionality that is often found in desktop applications.

ADONIS Main Features

• An easy-to-use, CAD-style graphical input window that allows the user to create geometry quickly and efficiently.
• Snap options that allow the user to quickly and easily “snap” exactly to any point or line segment in the view.
• Point-and-click selection.
• Powerful automatic mesh generators to generate triangular element.
• Data entry via dialogue boxes, accessed from menus, toolbars, and the command panel.
• Real-time display of construction sequences.
• Graphical display of loads and fixities.
• Full set of zoom functions.
• A material properties checking facility that can be set up with custom property values.
• Library of material models (e.g., elastic, Mohr-Coulomb plasticity, Hoek-Brown, strain-softening and modified Cam-Clay).
• Excavation, backfill simulation.
• Structural elements (e.g., beam, cable, tieback, and strip elements).
• Convenient specification of general boundary conditions (displacement and stress).
• Water table for effective stresses.
• Ability to save and reopen the model at any stage.
• A comprehensive set of graphing tools.
• A selective contouring facility.
• Yield status plots.
• Principal stress and strain plots.
• Automatic legend for all plots.
• Formatted, tabular printing of output data.
• What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get printing of graphics.
• Creation of graph queries to view and plot analysis results based on the current contour data.
• Embedded scripting language in ADONIS.
• User defined constitutive model.

How to get ADONIS

ADONIS is a free Finite Element program for Geo-Engineers. Currently ADONIS is available for windows only (i.e. Windows 7, 8, and 10). The program is freely available for research purposes from https://www.geowizard.org/download.html. New users must register first. I keep track of users and their downloads, so that I can inform them when new updates become available.

 How to contribute

Everyone can get involved and contribute to make this project even better. You can join the ADONIS project no matter if you are developer or not: testers, translators, volunteers providing users support, designers... there's a role for you.

• Testing and Feedback

If you would like to try out the latest and greatest new features and help with testing and feedback, please check out the current development version. Please use the Forum to report the bug and make sure to upload the script as well to be able to recreate the bug.

• Documentation and Translation

Currently ADONIS has no well documented manual. If you have any suggestions or recommendation and also want to contribute on this regard please let me know. Also ADONIS has this capability to dynamically switch from one language to another with single click. If you would like to translate ADONIS to different language please let me know so I can provide you with the list of the sentences that needed to be translated.

• Script Development

ADONIS comes with a powerful and complete ECMAScript (JavaScript) interface. JavaScript interface enables the user to define new variables and functions. These functions may be used to extend ADONIS 's usefulness or add user-defined features. I encourage users of ADONIS to share their input scripts and utility procedures with others. If you have a script or procedure you would like share it with others, please go to the user forum and upload your script.

• User Defined Constitutive Model (UDCM)

In ADONIS, users can define their own constitutive model and integrate the model into the program by using a dynamic-linking library (dll). The created dll should be placed in the installation folder of the program. The program will then detect and load the dll. An example dll including elastic isotropic material can be downloaded from download page. The details on how to create a dll will be provided in the documentation page. ADONIS users, who have developed their own UDCM, are strongly encouraged to contact me for having their UDCM shared with other users and developers. The source code of the UDCM will be included in the download page, if the developer agrees with the publication.

 Future Works

1. Creating unified user, theory and verification manuals.
2. Implementing higher order finite element (6-node triangular).
3. Introducing the interface element.
4. Performing dynamic analysis.
5. Performing couple fluid-mechanical analysis.
6. Additional pre- or post-processing capabilities.
7. Providing ADONIS in different languages (i.e. Spanish, French, German, etc.).
8. Make ADONIS available in macOS.