{The first two references describe meshing issues. The first is Paul Chew's paper on guaranteed quality curved surface meshing. The second is a paper surveying meshing issues and algorithms.
The second two references describe the use of algebraic-topology and the Chains computer language to model physical systems. The first describes how the Chains language is used to create a three page executable specification of a finite element approximation to plain stress. The second develops a general framework for physical systems representation based on the concepts of cells, cell complexes, chains and topological operations such as boundary and coboundary.
The final reference describes Rich Zippel's computer algebra system, Weyl, which is the algebraic software substrate on underlying the SimLab enginering analysis environment.