The libMesh library provides a framework for the numerical simulation of partial differential equations using arbitrary unstructured discretizations on serial and parallel platforms. A major goal of the library is to provide support for adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) computations in parallel while allowing a research scientist to focus on the physics they are modeling.

libMesh currently supports 1D, 2D, and 3D steady and transient finite element simulations. The library makes use of high-quality, existing software whenever possible. PETSc is used for the solution of linear systems on both serial and parallel platforms, and LASPack is included with the library to provide linear solver support on serial machines. An optional interface to SLEPc is also provided for solving both standard and generalized eigenvalue problems.

The libMesh library has been actively developed at The University of Texas at Austin in the CFDLab since March 2002. Major contributions have come from developers at the Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg Institute of Modelling and Computation, and recent contributions have been made by CFDLab graduates at Sandia National Laboratories and NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. The libMesh developers welcome contributions in the form of patches and bug reports (preferably with a minimal test case that reliably reproduces the error) to the official mailing lists. Many thanks to SourceForge for hosting the project. You can find out what is currently happening in the development branch by checking out the SVN Logs online, and you can see many people are downloading the library on the statistics page.