[petsc-users] Does PetscFE framework allow use of Hdiv and Hcurl elements ?

[Rochan Upadhyay]

Dear Petsc Users and Developers,

Upon looking at the function listings and their descriptions in the manual
suggests that the only finite element that can be automatically used is the
continuous Lagrange. Is it possible to "easily" use vector valued Hcurl and
Hdiv elements (like RT, NED, BDM and other more exotic types) ? It seems
that there are two methods for generating finite elements : (1) Compute
nodal basis functions from orthogonal polynomials with DOFs defined as
pointwise evaluations (PETSCSPACEPOLYNOMIAL) (2) Compute basis functions at
quadrature points yourself and input them directly (PETSCSPACEPOINT). Even
if you input the trial and test basis functions this way, how would we
input the various types of Piola transforms needed to map real to reference
space. It seems in the implementation at "EvaluateFieldJets" only the
covariant Piola transform (using invJ) is hard coded.

Also I cannot find a good documentation of Petsc FE capabilities (unlike
the superb presentations describing the DM routines). For me, it is
preferable to use Petsc directly for FEM as other packages like fenics,
libmesh etc.are too bulky, require too much effort to learn and not so easy
to experiment with.

Regards,
Rochan
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