OOF Newsletter #9 (September 2004) Dear Colleagues -- The OOF development team is proud to announce the first beta release of OOF2. Source code and installation instructions are available at http://www.ctcms.nist.gov/oof/oof2.html OOF2 has been compiled and run on Debian GNU/Linux stable (compiled with g++ 2.95.4), various versions of Redhat and Fedora Core Linux (with g++ compilers up to 3.3.3), Macintosh OS X 10.3.5 (with g++ 3.3), and SGI IRIX 6.5 (with MIPSpro 7.3.1). OOF2 solves the same kinds of physics problems that OOF1 does, but does so in a more flexible and powerful way. The current version only includes linear elasticity, thermal conductivity, and thermal expansion, but unlike OOF1, OOF2 can be (and will soon be) easily extended to include new physics, including, for example, chemical diffusion and piezoelectricity. In OOF2, materials are built by choosing from a list of material properties. Many properties can be assembled into a single material. We will be releasing new material property modules shortly, as well as instructions on how to create your own modules. Unlike OOF1, in OOF2 mesh generation, solution, and post-processing are all done within a single program. OOF2 provides both quadrilateral and triangular finite elements, in both linear and quadratic variants. It has more flexible boundary conditions than OOF1, and a greater variety of output routines. We encourage you to investigate the tutorials in OOF2's Help menu to learn more about its features. Because this is a beta release of OOF2, we acknowledge that there is a slight possibility that one or two bugs may still remain in the code. Please send bug reports to oof_bugs@ctcms.nist.gov For more details, see the "Bug Reports" section of the OOF2 web page. Suggestions for future additions to OOF2 are always welcome. Some things that we're working on are non-linear properties, time dependence, plasticity, periodic boundary conditions, parallel processing, and manuals. We expect to have a program (tentatively entitled 'oof2oof2', or 'ooftooof2') to convert OOF1 data files to the OOF2 format available shortly. Sincerely, The OOF2 team, Steve Langer Andrew Reid Seung-Ill Haan Edwin Garcia oof_manager@ctcms.nist.gov