LUSAS User Area

LUSAS Software Verification

LUSAS Software Development Environment

Over a period of many years LUSAS has developed procedures for the development of the range of LUSAS software products which sub-divide the development process into a number of well defined tasks.  These tasks include the creation of functional and detailed specifications, code walk-through, development documentation and project approval.

LUSAS software is developed under "configuration management control" within which test cases are regularly run to ensure that any errors are detected as soon as possible.  All changes to the code are logged and documented automatically.  When a major release of the software is to be created, each routine within the system is flagged with the version number.  This allows any further code modifications to be detected, tested and approved before release to the customer.

The Test Suite

The LUSAS Solver verification test suite is divided into three independent categories.

• The first category consists of a large number of small test cases which have been created as part of the development process to test all features within the system.  These test cases are modified systematically and added to when new developments are added or software errors detected, to ensure the product reaches the customer with the minimum number of defects.
• The second category consists of a number of test cases which have been created to compare the results against known solutions.  These tests include those presented in the Examples Manuals, NAFEMS benchmark tests, HECB calibration tests and a number of independent tests supplied by users of the system.
• The third category consists of a small number of large test cases which are used to monitor the resources required to run both LUSAS Solver and Modeller.

The LUSAS Modeller verification test suite consists of a number of carefully thought out example command files which generate both print and picture files to test both the pre- and post-processing.  As with the Solver test suite, new test cases are created as software enhancements are carried out and the test suite is reviewed when software errors are encountered.

Verification of LUSAS Solver

Before a major new version of the LUSAS finite element system is released, all the tests in the Solver test suite are run on the LUSAS development system using the new version of the code and checked automatically against previously verified results. This testing is approved by the Development Director.

To validate the Solver on the computer hardware platforms currently supported, LUSAS run the full set of category 1 tests on each machine and automatically compare the results to those obtained on the in-house development hardware.  Any differences are carefully examined and checked.  The system is only released when approval has been given by the Development Director.

LUSAS Solver verification tests are detailed in the LUSAS Verification Manual. See the appropriate links on the documentation index page

Verification of LUSAS Modeller (Pre- and Post-Processing)

The full Modeller test suite is run on each machine with print and picture file output compared to a set of verified results.  Any differences are carefully examined and checked.  Since the standard test suite does not test the user interface a manual test of the interface is carried out during the porting procedure.  The system is only released when approval has been given by the Development Director.