Programming the material point method in Julia

in Advances in Engineering Software (2017), 105

This article presents the implementation of the material point method (MPM) using Julia. Julia is an open source, multi-platform, high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical ... [more ▼]

This article presents the implementation of the material point method (MPM) using Julia. Julia is an open source, multi-platform, high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar to Matlab and Python programmers. MPM is a hybrid particle-grid approach that combines the advantages of Eulerian and Lagrangian methods and is suitable for complex solid mechanics problems involving contact, impact and large deformations. We will show that a Julia based MPM code, which is short, compact and readable and uses only Julia built in features, performs much better (with speed up of up to 8) than a similar Matlab based MPM code for large strain solid mechanics simulations. We share our experiences of implementing MPM in Julia and demonstrate that Julia is a very interesting platform for rapid development in the field of scientific computing. [less ▲]