Vulkan FEM Solver

VulkanFEM is a Finite Element Method Solver implementation on the GPU using Vulkan. For the implementation of the GPU pipeline, Kompute is used. The solver implements a Multigrid Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient Algorithm which also leverages the Matrix-Free formulation of a 3D domain. The problem created for solving is a basic Linear Elasticity Equation, where a voxel model is inputted to create the FEM system and solve for displacement.

Dependencies

• C++ compiler
  • On Windows: Visual Studio 2022 (for Visual C++ compiler)
  • On Linux: GCC
• CMake (tested with minimum 3.24)

Submodules

The project depends on Eigen and Kompute as submodules. Make sure to update the submodules after cloning the repository, with:

git submodule update --init

or download the projects manually into their folders.

How to Run

This project is created to be easily used with Visual Studio Code with CMake, but a manual usage is also possible.

With Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code has a very useful CMake extension, make sure to install CMake and enable the extension to use it for the project. With VS Code ready, just open the project folder with VS Code and it should automatically ask for building platform.

To build for the platform of choice, simply select build platform and configuration from the CMake bar on the bottom and hit build.

To run the project, Run and Debug window can be used. The current running profile must be matched manually to the CMake build configuration. The running profiles can be edited on .vscode/launch.json.

On Command Line/With Visual Studio

To build and run the project from the command line, CMake command line tools need to be used. In the project folder run

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -S .. --preset="Windows"

where preset is one of the configure presets according to the build platform, found in CMakePresets.json. After that

cd ..
cmake --build --preset "Windows Release"

with the corresponding build preset from CMakePresets.json. Alternatively on Windows, the solution created by CMake can be opened with Visual Studio.

To run the project,

cd .\build\Windows\src\Release\
.\VulkanFEM.exe data\armadillo_128.dat

or

cd build/Linux\ Release/src/
./VulkanFEM data/armadillo_128.dat

depending on the configurations selected.

Known Build Issues

• A patch to Kompute is done as a step of CMake configuration, however this can fail in certain cases and cause the build to fail. In such cases, the patch might need to be applied manually. The patch can be found in external/patches.
• In some cases during building with VS Code, compilation of the shaders can be done incompletely, as they consist of two steps. A second build can be done to ensure correct shaders are used if they are modified.

Additional Information

• Data for the program can be found in data folder, where there is a sample data and additional zipped data.
• To create data manually, the MATLAB Solver of GMGS-3D can be used and the data can be extracted with the script provided.
• The output of the program is saved to the data folder found in the build folder, same folder as the executable.
• For different types of solver runs, definitions in FEMDefines.hpp and main.cpp can be changed.