Design of object oriented finite element code

In this paper, a general structure of a recently developed object oriented finite element code is presented. The main reasons which lead to the development of the new general environment for a complex finite element computations are discussed. The principal requirements for new FEM code are formulated. The attention in this paper is put on an overall description of the program design and, particularly, on the description of representations of the general material model-element frame and the analysis module. Finally, computational efficiency of developed environment is compared to existing codes. (C) 2001 Civil-Comp Ltd and Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.