Electrostatics simulations on the cloud with NCLab

This survey paper describes NCLab (Network Computing Laboratory), a novel cloud computing service that is pioneering free web browser access to finite element simulations. Presently, these include general second-order linear partial differential equations, linear elasticity problems, and electrostatics problems (all in two spatial dimensions). The modeling process consists of geometry definition in the web browser, mesh generation on a remote server, specification of material parameters and boundary conditions in the web browser, computation on a remote server, and visualization in the web browser. The module supports curvilinear elements and higher-order finite element discretizations. In this paper we present the modeling process using a sample electrostatics problem. Numerical results are provided.