Surface Evolver – Fluid Interface Tool (SE-FIT™) is a Windows application that pairs a graphical user interface with the Surface Evolver (SE) computational engine. SE is a powerful tool for computing the shape and stability of equilibrium fluid interfaces. SE-FIT™ makes the command-line-based SE more accessible while expanding its capabilities, enabling users to obtain critical fluid interface data faster and more routinely. The result is at least an order-of-magnitude improvement in design efficiency over conventional Computational Fluid Dynamics approaches. SE-FIT™ was developed by the Capillary Fluidics Lab at Portland State University.
SE is well suited to studying fluid interfaces across a wide range of applications — microgravity tankage and propellant management devices (PMDs), inkjet printing, nanotechnology, porous media, self-assembly, foams, and micro-scale wicking structures, among others. In these settings, body forces are often negligible compared to surface forces, producing small Bond numbers (the dimensionless ratio of body to surface forces). SE-FIT™ offers a suite of prebuilt, customizable geometries and includes a Parameter Sweep function that can compute equilibrium surfaces or identify stability limits in batch mode, significantly reducing computation time. Together, these capabilities make SE-FIT™ a versatile platform for education, research, and engineering design.
SE-FIT™ is no longer under active development but remains freely available as-is. This site is maintained by IRPI LLC, an engineering services and R&D company whose team includes the original SE-FIT™ developers. For questions or support inquiries, please contact IRPI.