ORCAN: An Open Component Framework, and its Application to the Development of Complex Simulation Software

摘要

The Open Reflective Component Architecture, ORCAN, is designed to build the basis for a rapid incorporation of existing software packages into large-scale software projects -including the ability to replace packages with minimum effort. It consists of a collection of libraries implemented in portable C++ classes. In order to reduce complexity in using, maintaining, and developing with ORCAN, it is completely self-contained. It is platform independent and compiles well with all standard conformant C++ compilers. While ORCAN itself can be used for arbitrary applications, a set of components named ORCAN/Sim has been defined especially for standard simulation purposes. Existing components include mesh management, mesh generation, FEM discretization, linear equation system solving, and visualization. These components are being used in a given example to compute coupled heat conduction and heat radiation. With the definition of simulation specific components in ORCAN/Sim and the collection of ready-made realizations, we consider this framework to also be applicable by other groups in the thermal and CFD simulation software area. The entire framework - ORCAN, ORCAN/Sim, and a number of additional utilities - as well as most of the realizations, are made available under the terms of the Common Public License (CPL).