The TFELSystem library provide several functionalities to retrieve metada about material properties and behaviours generated by MFront. This functionalities are also available in python thanks to the tfel.system module.

Such functionalities are helpful for creating tools interacting with shared libraries generated by MFront. Examples of such tools are:

• MTest, which is build on top of the TFELMTest library. For python, the mtest module is also available.
• mfm
• tfel-plot.
• tfel-editor.

Those functionalities are already used by several solvers to easily integrate material properties and behaviours generated by MFront, such as:

• Cyrano (see [1])
• Licos (see [2])

Notes for propriary software

The TFELSystem library is released under the GPL licence. The MGIS project provides similar features under the LGPL licence but is focused on the generic interface.

Overview of the functionalities provided by theTFEL/System library

This page mostly discusses four classes:

• the ExternalLibraryManager class provides a low level API to retrieve individual data.
• the ExternalMaterialKnowledgeDescription, which is built on top of the ExternalLibraryManager class, gathers generic metadata about a material property or a behaviour.
• the ExternalMaterialPropertyDescription, which is built on top of the ExternalLibraryManager class and inherits from the ExternalMaterialKnowledgeDescription class, gathers generic metadata about a material property.
• the ExternalBehaviourDescription, which is also built on top of the ExternalLibraryManager class and also inherits from the ExternalMaterialKnowledgeDescription class, gathers generic metadata about a behaviour.

About the mtest::Behaviour class

The ExternalBehaviourDescription reads general information about the behaviours but don’t take into account specificities related to interfaces or modelling hypothesis.

The mtest::Behaviour class, which takes the interface and the modelling hypothesis into account, do provide a much more reliable way retrieving information about a mechanical behaviour

The ExternalMaterialKnowledgeDescription class

Overview of the ExternalMaterialKnowledgeDescription class

The ExternalMaterialKnowledgeDescription gathers information exported by MFront about an entry point (material property or behaviour). This class has been introduced as a base class for the ExternalMaterialPropertyDescription and ExternalBehaviourDescription classes.

This class exposes the following data members:

• library: the name of the library
• entry_point: the name of the entry point
• tfel_version: the version of TFEL used to generate the entry point
• build_id: the build identifier (if any)
• source: the MFront source file
• mfront_interface: the name of the interface used to generate the entry point.
• material: the name of the material, as introduced by the @Material keyword in MFront.
• author: the author of the implementation, as introduced by the @Author keyword in MFront.
• date: the date of the implementation, as introduced by the @Date keyword in MFront.
• description: the description of the entry point, as introduced by the @Description keyword in MFront.

The ExternalMaterialPropertyDescription class

Overview of the ExternalMaterialPropertyDescription class

The ExternalMaterialPropertyDescription gathers the information about a material property generated by MFront. It inherits from the ExternalMaterialKnowledgeDescription class.

Example of usage

The ExternalBehaviourDescription class

Overview of the ExternalBehaviourDescription class

Example of usage

The ExternalLibraryManager class

Overview of the ExternalLibraryManager class

Example of usage

References