Getting Started with OpenPhase
Welcome to the OpenPhase User Guide.
Introduction
OpenPhase is an open-source C++ software project started in 2008 at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Materials Simulation, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. OpenPhase is dedicated to investigating microstructure evolution in materials undergoing first-order phase transformations, capillarity-driven coarsening processes, or a combination of both. Also you may embed the simulation into a macroscopic process simulation which determine boundary conditions on the micro domain, heat fluxed, mechanical loading or others.
OpenPhase is based on the multi-phase-field model [1][2] as developed by Steinbach and his co-workers. However, the software is not restricted to “Steinbach models.” Other models, such as the Khachaturyan scheme of interface homogenization, are already implemented to be applied to problems where these models are of advantage, either from a theoretical point of view or simply from a practical point of view for an effective numerical solution. It is straightforward to implement your model in the software. We also strongly encourage scientists all around the world to provide their own special solutions. You are welcome to contribute new modules to the software project!
The commercial version, OpenPhase Studio, is meant for users from industry, as well as for users from academia who do not have sufficient experience in numerical simulations to handle the academic code without support. It provides a graphical user interface and additional features like the coupling to thermodynamic databases for multi-component diffusion, as well as finite-strain elasticity and advanced plasticity models. Furthermore, custom solutions for specific user problems can be offered.
Features
- Open-source library.
- Simplified microstructure creation.
- Simulations from 1D to 3D are available, with a choice of resolution and a variety of boundary conditions.
- Multiple components, phases, and grains are possible in a multi-phase-field simulation.
- OpenMP and MPI parallelization.
- Easy to extract various statistics.