preCICE v2: A Sustainable and User-Friendly Coupling Library

TL;DR

preCICE v2 is a sustainable, user-friendly open-source coupling library that facilitates multi-physics simulations, with proven scalability, community engagement, and comprehensive integration and testing features.

Contribution

This paper details the development of preCICE v2, transforming it into a sustainable, scalable, and community-driven software platform for multi-physics coupling.

Findings

Scalability on ten thousand compute cores

Over 100 research groups use preCICE

Performance and accuracy of data mapping methods analyzed

Abstract

preCICE is a free/open-source coupling library. It enables creating partitioned multi-physics simulations by gluing together separate software packages. This paper summarizes the development efforts in preCICE of the past five years. During this time span, we have turned the software from a working prototype -- sophisticated numerical coupling methods and scalability on ten thousands of compute cores -- to a sustainable and user-friendly software project with a steadily-growing community. Today, we know through forum discussions, conferences, workshops, and publications of more than 100 research groups using preCICE. We cover the fundamentals of the software alongside a performance and accuracy analysis of different data mapping methods. Afterwards, we describe ready-to-use integration with widely-used external simulation software packages, tests and continuous integration from unit to system level, and community building measures, drawing an overview of the current preCICE ecosystem.