Elmer Studio

Elmer Studio

Build, solve and post-process multiphysics models with the open-source Elmer FEM solver, entirely from a graphical desktop.

You never write an Elmer .sif file, a gmsh script or an ElmerGrid command. Geometry, materials, physics, mesh, studies and results all live in one Model Builder tree, much like COMSOL Multiphysics.

Install Quick start in 15 minutes Tutorials

Elmer Studio showing the temperature in a busbar after a Joule heating simulation

Where to start

Install

Download a ready-to-run package for Windows, macOS or Linux, then add Elmer.

Installation guide →

Your first model

A copper bar heated at one end: parameters, geometry, material, boundary conditions, mesh, solve, plots. The solver reproduces the hand calculation exactly.

Quick start →

Find your way around

Ribbon, Model Builder, Settings, Graphics and the panes underneath, plus every keyboard shortcut and mouse action.

The desktop → · Shortcuts →

Coming from COMSOL?

The same concepts under the same names, with a table that maps each COMSOL node to its Elmer Studio equivalent and the Elmer solver behind it.

Concept map →

Tutorials

Busbar: Joule heating
Busbar geometry

Work planes, fillets, electric currents coupled to heat transfer, and a parametric sweep.

Open tutorial →

Wrench: solid mechanics
Solid mechanics result

A total-force load, von Mises stress and a mesh convergence study.

Open tutorial →

Postprocessing
Isosurfaces and streamlines

Cut planes, isosurfaces, streamlines, revolution datasets, polar plots and derived values.

Open tutorial →

Acoustics
3D radiation pattern

Radiation into open space, exterior fields, radiation patterns and directivity.

Open tutorial →

Electrochemistry
Disc electrode current density

Secondary current distribution with electrode kinetics, checked against analytical solutions.

Open tutorial →

Application Library
Flow past a cylinder

Nine ready-made models, each solved and plotted in a few seconds.

Browse →

What you can model

Area Physics interfaces

Heat transfer

Heat Transfer in Solids: conduction, convection by a prescribed or computed velocity, heat sources, convective heat flux, surface-to-ambient radiation.

Structural mechanics

Solid Mechanics: stationary and eigenfrequency, plane stress and plane strain, rotating frames, total-force loads, spring foundations.

AC/DC

Electrostatics, Electric Currents, Magnetic Fields (2D and 2D axisymmetric).

Fluid flow

Laminar Flow, with Stokes flow as an option.

Acoustics

Pressure Acoustics, Frequency Domain, with spherical-wave radiation and an exterior field calculation.

Chemical species and electrochemistry

Transport of Diluted Species, Secondary Current Distribution with Butler–Volmer, Tafel and user-defined kinetics, and tertiary coupling.

Mathematics

Coefficient Form PDE.

Multiphysics

Electromagnetic heating, thermal expansion, nonisothermal flow.

Every result in the tutorials is checked against a closed-form solution or a published benchmark. See Verification.

How it works

Elmer Studio keeps your model as a tree of nodes, saved as a single .esm file together with its solutions. When you build or compute, it does the following:

  1. builds the geometry with the OpenCASCADE kernel of gmsh, numbering domains, boundaries, edges and points by position;

  2. meshes it with gmsh and writes a native Elmer mesh;

  3. translates materials, physics features and study steps into an Elmer solver input file (.sif), choosing the Elmer solver modules and their settings;

  4. runs ElmerSolver, showing its convergence and log live;

  5. reads the results back for plots, datasets, integrals and tables.

The .sif is always one click away (Study  Show Elmer Input File), so you can see exactly what Elmer is asked to do. Elmer under the hood explains the translation.

Elmer Studio is an independent, GPL-licensed project. It is not affiliated with COMSOL AB or with CSC, the developers of Elmer, and it uses no COMSOL assets. COMSOL terminology is used only so that COMSOL users can find their way.