Code_Aster is the structural analysis program of Électricité de France (EDF). Since 2001, it is available under GPL license for free software.

Compared with other free FEM programs, Code_Aster stands out with its pretty complete functionality. In addition to the numerical solver which works both in serial and parallelized, there is the pre- and postprocessing Workbench "Salome" for editing, meshing and visualizing the models and results.

Since Code_Aster is developed and used for the calculation of nuclear reactors, the code is subject to a comprehensive quality control, which is another unique property.

The special software architecture of Code_Aster enables extensive automation of all calculation processes