Solvers Available in package

Solvers available in BriefFiniteElement.NET

There are two solvers available in BriefFiniteElement.NET: Conjugate Gradient and Cholesky solver. you can set the model to use a specific solver with passing a parameter of SolverType type into Model.Solve method like this:

• Model.Solve(SolverType.CholeskyDecomposition); //will use Cholesky as solver or
• Model.Solve(SolverType.ConjugateGradient); //will use Conjugate Gradient as solver

Note: if do not provide SolverType for Model.Solve() method, Cholesky will be used by default.

Difference between Solvers in BriefFIniteElement.NET

I've found a pretty good information about difference of solvers in SolidWorks by Irfan Zardadkhan. I suggest you to see at least the last link (the video):

• Which Solver? FFEPlus vs. Direct Sparse – PART 1

• Which Solver? FFEPlus vs. Direct Sparse – PART 2

In BriefFiniteElement.NET there are two built it solvers available:

• CondugateGradient solver which is itterative like FFEPlus solver in SolidWorks
• SparseCholesky solver which is a direct solver and there is a very likely difference (regarding the error and accuracy) between these two solvers with solvers in SolidWorks. In overal this is comparison table of two solvers:

Cholesky Solver (Direct Solver)

• pros:
  • More accuracy
  • Once the structure is analyzed for a load case (once the stiffness matrix factorized) a negligible time is needed for analyzing structure for another load case
• cons:
  • Slower than iterative solver
  • More memory and computational cost is needed than iterative solver (in some large problems it makes it impossible to use direct solver)

Conjugate Gradient Solver (Iterative)

• pros
  • Faster than direct solver
  • less computational cost
• cons
  • Less accuracy
  • analyzing structure for any load case takes same amount of time

Please have a look at [Performance of BriefFiniteElement.NET] to see more information about speed of solvers in action.