Bibliogr. f. 154-161

Thèse de doctorat informatique 1971 Stanford University

A detailed study of the implementation of finite element methods for solving two-dimensional elliptic partial differential equations is presented. Generation and storage schemes for triangular meshes are considered, and the use of irregular meshes for finite element methods is shown to be relatively inexpensive in terms of storage. The report demonstrates that much of the manipulation of the basis functions necessary in the derivation of the approximation equations can be done semi-symbolically rather than numerically as is usually done. Ordering algorithms, compact storage schemes, and efficient implementation of elimination methods are studied in connection with sparse systems of finite element equations. A Fortran code is included for the finite element solution of a class of elliptic boundary value problems, and numerical solutions of several problems are presented. Comparisons among different finite element methods, and between finite element methods and their competitors are included