PyPartMC: A Pythonic interface to a particle-resolved, Monte Carlo aerosol simulation framework

TL;DR

PyPartMC provides a user-friendly Python interface to the complex Fortran-based PartMC aerosol simulation framework, simplifying installation and integration across platforms for researchers and practitioners.

Contribution

It introduces a Pythonic wrapper that streamlines setup, execution, and visualization of PartMC simulations, making aerosol modeling more accessible and easier to integrate.

Findings

Single-step installation via pip on multiple OS

Simplified setup process for users with limited UNIX experience

Enables integration with other languages like Julia

Abstract

PyPartMC is a Pythonic interface to PartMC, a stochastic, particle-resolved aerosol model implemented in Fortran. Both PyPartMC and PartMC are free, libre, and open-source. PyPartMC reduces the number of steps and mitigates the effort necessary to install and utilize the resources of PartMC. Without PyPartMC, setting up PartMC requires: working with UNIX shell, providing Fortran and C libraries, and performing standard Fortran and C source code configuration, compilation and linking. This can be challenging for those less experienced with computational research or those intending to use PartMC in environments where provision of UNIX tools is less straightforward (e.g., on Windows). PyPartMC offers a single-step installation/upgrade process of PartMC and all dependencies through the pip Python package manager on Linux, macOS, and Windows. This allows streamlined access to the unmodified and versioned Fortran internals of the PartMC codebase from both Python and other interoperable environments (e.g., Julia through PyCall). Consequently, users of PyPartMC can setup, run, process and visualize output of PartMC simulations using a single general-purpose programming language.