OOF2: The Manual

3.12. Fields
	Chapter 3. Task Pages

3.12. Fields

The Fields Page specifies which Fields are defined on the Mesh and assigns initial values to them. It has three parts, as shown in Figure 3.21. The Mesh Chooser at the top of the page specifies which Mesh is being operated upon. The Field Pane sets various properties of the Fields. The Initialization Pane sets initial values for the Fields.

Figure 3.21. The Fields Page

The Field Pane

The Field Pane specifies which Fields are defined on the Mesh, and sets attributes of those Fields. The buttons for each Field correspond to commands in the OOF.Mesh.Field menu.

Toggling the define defines and undefines the Field. The Mesh only stores values for defined Fields.
Toggling the active button activates and deactivates the Field. The Equations (see the Equations Page) only solve for active Fields.
OOF2 generalizes the standard concept of plane-strain to apply to arbitrary coupled Fields. Toggling the in-plane button determines whether or not the Field has out-of-plane derivatives, by invoking OOF.Mesh.Field.In_Plane or OOF.Mesh.Field.Out_of_Plane. The counterpart to generalized plane-strain, plane-flux, is controlled by the Equations Page.

The Initialization Pane

The Initialization Pane is in charge of assigning initial values to the Fields that are defined on the Mesh. Fields that haven't explicitly been initialized are marked “<uninitialized>”. The values of all components of such a Field are not determined (but probably are all zero).

When solving static problems, it's not necessary to initialize Fields that are active, since values will be assigned to them by the solver. However, the iterative solvers will converge faster if the initial values of the Fields are close to the actual solution. Fields that are not active, or are being used in time dependent problems,^[6] should always be initialized.

In Figure 3.21, temperature has been initialized to a function, x+2*y, and the two components of the displacement have been set to constants, 0.0 and 0.01. Selecting a Field in the list and clicking the Set Initializer button brings up a dialog box for setting the initial values. Double-clicking on a Field in the list has the same effect. For more details, see OOF.Mesh.Initialize.

The Copy Field State button copies all of the Field attributes (defined, active, in-plane, and initializer) from the current Mesh to a target Mesh. The target is specified in a dialog box.

^[6] This manual may appear before the time-dependent version of OOF2 is available. Early versions of OOF2 don't include time dependence.


3.11. FE Mesh		3.13. Equations

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