esys-escript is a module for implementing mathematical models in Python using the finite element method (FEM). As users do not access the underlying data structures it is very easy to use and scripts can run on desktop computers as well as massive parallel supercomputers without changes. Application areas for esys-escript include geophysical inversion, earthquakes, porous media flow, reactive transport, plate subduction, erosion, earth mantle convection, and tsunamis.
esys-escript is designed as an easy-to-use environment for implementing mathematical models based on non-linear, coupled, time-dependent partial differential equations. It uses the finite element method (FEM) for spatial discretization and data representation and is used through Python. It is suitable for rapid prototyping (e.g. for a student project or thesis) as well as for large software projects. Scripts are executed sequentially, on multi-core platforms via OpenMP and distributed computing clusters using MPI. The hybrid mode of OpenMP and MPI is supported and allows for solving problems with over 200 million unknowns on several thousand cores on a parallel computer.
For geophyscial inversion see also the extensions gambit and fingal.
The latest release is esys-escript 6.1.0.
Highlights:
- Trilinos upgraded from v14 to v17.0.0 (bundled source, built in-tree).
- New
SolverFrameworkAPI replacing theSO_PACKAGE_PASO/SO_PACKAGE_TRILINOSconstants. - Major MPI-correctness fixes in Speckley, Ripley and the Trilinos wrapper; the test suite now runs cleanly under MPI, OpenMP, and combined configurations.
- HDF5 dumping/loading for
Data(including complex and mesh data); the netCDF dependency has been removed. InterpolationTableclass for 1-D / 2-D / 3-D table-based interpolation, including complex-valued tables.- macOS arm64 (Apple Silicon) build support including Trilinos with MueLu and METIS via Homebrew.
- GitHub Actions CI extended across multiple Linux distributions and macOS.
See RELEASE_NOTES for the full change list.
- python based user interface
- two- and three-dimensional finite and spectral element simulations
- specialized geophysical inversion module
- support for VTK and SILO file format
- unstructured meshes from gmsh
- parallelization with OpenMP and MPI support
- Flux Controlled Transport solver (FEM-FCT)
- visualization with VisIt, paraview, mayavi and others
- platform is Linux; there is limited support for MacOS and Windows
Source code is available at https://github.com/LutzGross/esys-escript.github.io.
A version of the documentation for the current master brunch is available here.
To raise a question or to report a bug please start a github issue.
Please inspect the installation guide for information on a specific Linux distribution.
Debian packages [python3-escript-mpi] and [python3-escript] for version 5 are available.
To install esys-escript for anaconda, first run conda and then the command
conda install esys-escript -c conda-forge
At present, this is the recommended way to run esys-escript on Windows.
Online documentation for master branch is available here.
If you publish work that makes use of esys-escript, we would appreciate it if you would cite the following reference:
- R Schaa, L Gross, J du Plessis, PDE-based geophysical modelling using finite elements: examples from 3D resistivity and 2D magnetotellurics, Journal of Geophysics and Engineering, Volume 13, Issue 2, April 2016, Pages S59–S73
- L. Gross, L. Bourgouin, A.J. Hale, H.-B. Mühlhaus, Interface modeling in incompressible media using level sets in Escript, Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, Volume 163, Issues 1–4, 2007, Pages 23-34
Copyright (c) 2003-2026 by the esys.escript Group. The majority of the files contained in this distribution are licensed under the Apache License, version 2.0, http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0, see LICENSE.
Esys-escript has started in 2003 as one of the first projects that made systemic use of the Python language for large-scale scientific computing. It is the product of years of work by many people with funding from Australian Commonwealth, see CREDITS.