Crack propagation applet

May 19,1998. Having trouble with applet performance? Being careful to make your applet small and knowing how to to use threads can make a big difference. Take a look at our Freedom VR applet to see what we've learned...

In the fall of 1996 I developed a client/server applet which acted as a front end for FRANC2D, a FORTRAN program which uses finite-element methods to simulate the growth of cracks. You can look at the slides from a talk I gave about the applet on Decemeber 16,1996 to a small conference on Java for Scientific and Engineering Computing held at NPAC. I'm leaving the project so I can think about physics all the time, and other people including Matt Kuntz are going to work on developing a version of the applet which can be used in K-12 education. This work was funded as part of an NSF project titled Integration of Information Age Networking and Parallel Supercomputer Simulations into University General Science and K-12 Curricula. Links to the full applet and source code for it's components should appear here over time.