YACS - Progression Towards Isoparametric 2.5D Finite Elements

YACS is a 2.5D finite element method solver capable of solving for the full 3D eigenfrequency spectra of resonant axisymmetric structures while reducing the computational problem to a 2D rotation plane. Prior studies and benchmarks, comparing YACS to well known commercial 3D and 2D applications, already demonstrated its capabilities of performing fast optimizations of geometries, due to its minimal computational overhead. However, because of the first order elements and basis functions used for approximation of the domain and field, this solving speed advantage vastly diminishes when targeting higher accuracies. In order to circumvent these issues, YACS was upgraded to support arbitrary order basis functions and curved meshes, leading to, but not limited to, isoparametric finite elements. This led to distinct performance and convergence improvements, especially when considering curved geometries, ideally representable by a polynomial mapping, e.g. when choosing a cavity geometry parametrization based on splines.
Proceedings of the 7th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2016, Busan, Korea