2 \page glossary Glossary, concepts and definitions
4 - \b Mesh: representation of a domain by a set of \b cells and \b nodes. Cells and nodes are named \b entities. There is no notion of edges or faces.
5 - The \b dimension \b of \b a \b mesh is characterized by two parameters: the size of the space wherein the mesh is immersed, and the (maximum) size of the mesh cells.
6 Examples: 3D surface mesh (3D space, 2D cells), 3D mesh (3D space, 3D cells), curved 2D mesh (2D space, 1D cells)...
8 - \b Field: physical quantity whose value varies in space and time. Represented by a result vector V obtained from one or more tables of values A, at any point of space covered by a mesh and in time defined by its temporal resolution. The size of V is called the number of \b components (equal to the number of components of A).
9 A <b>P1 field</b> is a field where values are stored at node level, a <b>P0 field</b> is a field where values are stored
11 - \b Intensive \b field: represents intensive physical data (i.e. which do not depend on the amount of material).
12 Examples: density, power density, temperature, pressure.
13 - \b Extensive \b field: represents extensive physical data (i.e. proportional to the size of the physical system represented).
14 Examples: mass, volume, time, power.
15 - The \b mesh \b support identifies both the mesh and the entity on which it is defined.
17 - \b Family: partition of a mesh (nodes and cells with the same identifier). Every node or cell can only belong to one family, i.e. the intersection of two families is zero.
18 - \b Group: a set of families; two groups may share elements.
19 - \b Profile: subset of the entities of a mesh.
20 - \b Field \b profile: indicates on which mesh entities field values are located (a field being defined on a part of a mesh).
22 - The \b connectivity of a mesh represents the kind of connections between its vertices.
23 - The \b nodal \b connectivity is the description of a mesh entity by the ordered list of its nodes.
24 - The \b descending \b connectivity is the description of N-dimensional mesh entities by the ordered list of (N-1)-dimensional geometrical entities.
26 - \b Intersector: algorithm that calculates the intersection of two cells from their position and geometry.
27 - \b Maximum \b principle: a property of solutions to certain partial differential equations, of the elliptic and parabolic types; it says that the maximum of a function in a domain is to be found on the boundary of that domain.
28 - \b Conservativity: preservation of conservation laws governing physical quantities during their discretization or their interpolation.
29 - \b Projection: modification (by interpolation) of the entity on which a field is defined. The projection is called \b conservative if the interpolation uses intersection detection. The projection is said \b not \b conservative if the interpolation localizes a cloud of points in a mesh.
30 - The \b Gauss \b integration \b points are the geometrical points where the numerical integration of a given quantity is performed. Precise location of these nodes and a sufficient number (related to the approximation order of the integration term) allow for an exact integration in the case of polynomial functions integration.
31 - \b Kriging: a linear estimation method guaranteeing minimum variance. The estimate at a given point P is obtained locally from the point values on a neighbourhood of P.
32 - \b Code \b coupling: run of two numerical codes (or two instances of the same code) in such a way that information
33 is passed from one instance to the other.
