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Finite element method (FEM) refers to a general method for calculating solutions to partial differential equations. It is suited to a number of types of physical problems including fluid dynamics. Variants have been in development since the 1950s, originally for engineering problems. The finite element method involves breaking the modeled phenomena (e.g., a field) into parts with flat sides, straight edges, and corners (nodes), and generates a set of simultaneous algebraic equations that indicate the field values at the nodes and interpolate to estimate other values.