preCICE is a coupling library for partitioned multi-physics simulations, including, but not restricted to fluid-structure interaction and conjugate heat transfer simulations. preCICE couples existing simulation software in a minimally invasive way and is open-source under the LGPL3 license. The source code is available on GitHub.
We provide ready-to-use adapters for SU2, CalculiX, and Code_Aster. An official OpenFOAM adapter will be available end of this year. Adapters for in-house codes can be written in nearly 30 lines of code.
v1.0.0 was released on Nov 9, 2017.
In contrast to other coupling software, preCICE is prepared for the next generation of multi-physics simulations thanks to the following features:
- Fully parallel peer-to-peer concept: Coupled solvers directly communicate with each other without requiring a central instance. All coupling operations are executed directly on the solvers' compute resources. This enables massively parallel simulations without the coupling being the bottleneck of the overall simulation.
- Pure library approach: In contrast to a framework approach, the solvers call preCICE instead of being called by the framework. This makes coupling minimally-invasive and thus easy to set up and to maintain. The preCICE API operates on a generic level, allowing highest flexibility and the implementation of new adapters in as little as approximately 30 lines of code.
- Sophisticated and robust quasi-Newton coupling algorithms: They enable the partitioned realization of strongly-coupled problems, such as those observed in hemodynamic applications.
- Multi coupling: preCICE allows the robust coupling of an arbitrary number of solvers to one overall simulation.
