Syllabus academic year 2011/2012
(Created 2011-09-01.)
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FOR TECHNICAL APPLICATIONSVSMN20
Credits: 7,5. Grading scale: UG. Cycle: A (Second Cycle). Main field: Technology. Language of instruction: The course will be given in Swedish. VSMN20 overlaps following cours/es: VSM032. Optional for: F4, F4bs, M4, Pi4, V4ko. Course coordinator: Jonas Lindemann, Jonas.Lindemann@construction.lth.se and Professor Ola Dahlblom, Ola.Dahlblom@construction.lth.se, Structural Mechanics. Prerequisites: VSMN25 The Finite Element Method - Flow Analysis or FHL064 Finite Element Method or VSMF05Engineering Modelling: Analysis of Structures. The course might be cancelled if the number of applicants is less than 15. Assessment: Compulsory written assignments. Oral examination including presentation of the computer code developed and acting as opponent on other student's presentation of computer code. Home page: http://www.byggmek.lth.se.

Aim
The course aims at giving the student ability to develop complex computation software for technical applications, including graphical user interfaces.

Knowledge and understanding
For a passing grade the student must

Skills and abilities
For a passing grade the student must

Judgement and approach
For a passing grade the student must

Contents
The course consists mainly of an applied program development task based on the finite element method. The program shall contain both computational code and a graphical user interface. Different programming languages are used for the different parts, to utilise the fact that different languages have advantages for different tasks. The program development is divided into several subtasks, each representing an assignment to be turned in. The computer code developed must be tested and documented, and be presented at an oral exam.

To carry out the task, the student must acquire knowledge in the programming languages to be used. The task is designed in such a way that the degree of difficulty gradually increases for each subtask. In the tasks the following features are included: information about hardware, system software, graphical user interfaces, structuring of computer software, and implementation of element routines, mesh generation and visualisation. Furthermore, short descriptions of software and hardware systems for high performance computations, commercial finite element codes and their structure including pre- and post processors.

Literature
Lindemann and Dahlblom: Getting started with Fortran 90/95. Handouts. In the course Fortran 90/95 and a tool for fast development of graphical user interfaces are used.