The Neper/FEPX Project: Free / Open-source Polycrystal Generation, Deformation Simulation, and Post-processing

Abstract

Abstract In the past couple of years, efforts have lead toward the convergence of two established software packages: Neper, developed primarily at CNRS and Mines Saint-Étienne, and FEPX, developed historically at the Deformation Process laboratory at Cornell University and (since 2020) at the Advanced Computational Materials Engineering Laboratory at the University of Alabama. The objective was to create an extensive and homogeneous ensemble for polycrystal plasticity studies that includes polycrystal generation and meshing, parallel finite-element crystal-plasticity simulation, post-processing and visualization. The two programs were upgraded to common standards, both in terms of usage and resources. Collectively, the project is under active development and distributed under free / open-source license (see both: https://neper.info, https://fepx.info).