FEAP for Mac OS X

José M.ª Goicolea, 21 sep 2012

FEAP has been developed by Prof. R.L. Taylor from the University of California at Berkeley, and it contains work from a number of renowned experts and researchers in finite elements. It is an advanced program for linear and nonlinear models, under static or dynamic analysis. FEAP is employed frequently as a base for research work in academic groups.

The binary versions of FEAP which may be downloaded here incorporate a number of additions, bug corrections, extensions and new elements and materials. These have been programmed by researchers in the computational mechanics group (Felipe Gabaldón, José M.ª Goicolea, Javier Rodríguez Soler, Sergio Blanco). The binaries have been obtained with the GNU gfortran (gcc) compiler or the Intel fortran compiler, for Linux, Mac OS X or Windows (cygwin environment). The program FEAP as such consists of only one binary file.

FEAP is executed from the shell command terminal and uses an X11 graphics server (available under Linux/Unix, Mac OS X and Windows+Cygwin).

Detailed instructions to install FEAP in Mac OS X:

(Tested on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.7 Lion, compiled with macports gcc45 gfortran.)

1. The first step is to install the X11 software, if it is not already loaded (see Applications / Utilities). X11 is available in the Mac OS X installation disk, so it may be installed at the same time as Mac OS X. To install X11 in a system with Mac OS X already installed, insert the Mac OS X installation disk and double click in the package "optional installations". (It is possible that you may have to scroll down to see it.) Follow the instructions shown on the screen. It may also be obtained freely in the web, see developer.apple.com/opensource/tools/x11.html
2. Download the FEAP executable
   • Mac OS X 64 bit: feap81_macgfortran64
   • Mac OS X 32 bit (older legacy macs): please contact me directly
3. From a terminal (Applications / Utilities / Terminal.app):
   • Store the downloaded file in a convenient user folder. For instance, within the user home folder create a subfolder named "feap81" and copy it there:
     $ mkdir feap81; mv feap81_mac* feap81/
     
   • Make sure the downloaded file has permission for execution:
     $ cd feap81; chmod +x feap81_macgfortran* ; ls -l feap81_macgfortran*
     you should see a line such as the following, with "x" permissions:
     -rwxr-xr-x 1 goico staff 5013416 24 sep 18:30 feap81_macgfortran64
     
   • For a friendlier use of FEAP, create a symbolic link in a folder which is in the system path for executables ($PATH), such as "/usr/local/bin", which we create if necessary:
     $ sudo mkdir /usr/local/bin
     $ sudo ln -s ~/feap81/feap81_macgfortran64 /usr/local/bin/feap
     It will now be possible to use FEAP from the terminal located in any work folder, simply issuing the command "feap".
4. Test FEAP, running one of the following models:
   • Brazilian test (linear elasticity, static) [Ibrasil]
   • Taylor bar impact (large strain plasticity, dynamic) [Itayl]
   Download the file with the FEAP model data, copy in a work folder, execute feap from a terminal. At the end type "q" and press twice the return key.

• Link to the downloaded FEAP binary for universal access:
  [Pantalla-1.png]
• Execution of FEAP test cases:
  [Pantalla-2.png] [Pantalla-3.png] [Pantalla-4.png] [Pantalla-5.png]