Elmer FEM — The Complete Guide: Open-Source Multiphysics Simulation
Elmer FEM was developed at Finland's IT Center for Science (CSC) and is one of the leading open finite element solvers for multiphysics problems — where several phenomena affect each other: heat causing stresses, electric current causing heating, flow causing cooling. It is open source and runs on Windows and Linux.
Elmer FEM
CSC — IT Center for Science, Finland
Multiphysics FEA — solids, flow, heat and electromagnetics — with its own graphical interface.
Get it from the vendorWhat Elmer solves
- Heat transfer — conduction, convection and radiation, steady and transient.
- Structural mechanics — linear and nonlinear elasticity, natural frequencies.
- Flow — Navier-Stokes for incompressible fluids and flow in porous media.
- Electromagnetics — static fields, induction, eddy currents and electrical machines.
- Acoustics — sound propagation and vibration.
- Coupling — linking several solvers in one model, for example thermo-mechanical or electro-thermal.
How you work with it
Elmer has a graphical interface, ElmerGUI, where you load a mesh, choose equations, set materials and boundary conditions and run. The mesh is usually prepared in Gmsh, Netgen or SALOME. Advanced users work directly in the setup file (.sif), and runs can be parallel (MPI) on many cores. Results open in ParaView.
Gmsh
Gmsh Project
FEA mesh generator with built-in geometry and scripting — standard infrastructure for open numerical work.
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Netgen / NGSolve — Multiphysics Finite Elements
TU Wien / NGSolve Project
High-order finite element mesher and solver for mechanics, flow and electromagnetics.
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SALOME
CEA / EDF / OPEN CASCADE
Geometry, meshing and post-processing platform for FEA, around external solvers.
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ParaView
Kitware / Sandia / Los Alamos
Large-scale simulation post-processing — slices, streamlines and animation.
Get it from the vendorWhat's missing
ElmerGUI is relatively basic, and setting up complex couplings needs work in the text file. There is no built-in geometry modeller. The documentation is comprehensive but technical, and there are no code checks. As in any FEA, mesh quality and boundary conditions decide how reliable the result is.
Who it suits
Mechanical, electrical and energy engineers who need coupling between phenomena, motor and transformer designers, researchers and graduate students.
Alternatives and companion tools
For structures only with a friendly interface — PrePoMax. For advanced structural problems — Code_Aster. For writing your own equations — FEniCS or MOOSE.
PrePoMax
University of Maribor
Full graphical front end for CalculiX — meshing, materials, loads and results in one window.
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Code_Aster
EDF
EDF industrial finite element solver — nonlinear, dynamic and thermo-mechanical, open source.
Get it from the vendorFEniCS
FEniCS Project
Solve partial differential equations by writing the variational form directly.
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MOOSE Framework
Idaho National Laboratory
A multi-physics finite-element framework from Idaho National Laboratory.
Get it from the vendorBottom line
When your problem is not only structural or only thermal but both at once, Elmer FEM is one of the most mature free tools for it.