deal.II library and Discontinuous Galerkin (DG-FEM) method

[Malik Tahiyat]

I have two question out of curiosity. These are not support related but would be happy if I can get some insights:

1. I read about deal.II library of codes for solving FEM for various problems. Does Zapdos use deal.II as well and if not does the potential exist to use those libraries to solve FEM problems with Zapdos? 
   https://www.dealii.org/
   
   
2. Is there any Discontinuous Galerkin (DG-FEM) formulation currently in Zapdos and if not, does it have the potential to incorporate the DG discretisation if anyone wants to work on it? (If I am correct: In simple terms DG method improves upon FEM by taking conservation in consideration)
   http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/~apek/DGFEMCourse/
   

[Shane Keniley]

I read about deal.II library of codes for solving FEM for various problems. Does Zapdos use deal.II as well and if not does the potential exist to use those libraries to solve FEM problems with Zapdos?

The Moose framework is based on libmesh, not deal.II. I don't see any reason why Moose would decide to switch their finite element library. Libmesh is working very well for them. I'm not sure what it would take to add deal.II support, but I assume it would constitute rewriting a significant portion of Moose for very little (if any) benefit. 

Is there any Discontinuous Galerkin (DG-FEM) formulation currently in Zapdos and if not, does it have the potential to incorporate the DG discretisation if anyone wants to work on it? (If I am correct: In simple terms DG method improves upon FEM by taking conservation in consideration)

There is very little DG-FEM currently implemented for Zapdos, but Moose absolutely supports DG! Here's a link to the relevant section on the website so you can see a couple examples of DG kernels:

https://mooseframework.inl.gov/syntax/DGKernels/index.html

The functionality is there for anyone who wants to use it in their own applications. I've been interested in adding it to Zapdos as well. I just haven't found the time.