Reducing the entry barrier for users and developers of peridynamic high performance computing

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Peridynamics (PD) research has exhibited remarkable diversity, with contributions spanning more than 180 journals and involving over 1000 researchers. Despite its broad applicability, a persistent challenge remains, how to foster widespread adoption. In the engineering domain, classical continuum mechanics, predominantly facilitated by the finite element method, enjoys extensive utilization, supported by a plethora of commercial and open-source software tools. PD simulation tools often find themselves competing with these well-established counterparts. In research, custom codes tailored for specific applications are frequently created and applied, with little consideration for their future reuse or third-party utilization. The complexity is further exacerbated in High-performance computing (HPC) applications, where a deep understanding of solvers, parallel computing, and PD is imperative for a successful software development. Given the constraints of a typical doctoral thesis, large-scale problems are often left unexplored, and research tends to be confined to simplistic geometries. This paper aims to elucidate various pathways for the seamless integration and utilization of a PD framework. We will showcase examples that illustrate how the barriers for both users and developers can be significantly lowered, ultimately propelling PD simulation tools to a higher standard of maturity in the medium term.