mote3d/mote3d_toolbox

Toolbox for particulate microstructure modelling

Mote3D

Update: the current release is version 2.1, a new release is coming soon.

Description

Mote3D is an adaptable, easy-to-use open-source software toolbox for the generation of random particulate microstructure models with periodic boundaries. Mote3D can be used to generate virtual models that represent the microstructure of various inhomogeneous engineering materials such as particle-reinforced composites, partially sintered ceramics, powders, open-cell foams or concrete aggregates, as well as of certain nanomaterials, biomaterials or scaffolds. These models can be employed, for example, to analyse the relation between microstructure and overall mechanical, electrical or thermal properties by virtual materials testing.

The Mote3D toolbox works by randomly positioning spherical particles with user-defined minimum inter-particle distance in a cubical computational domain. The generated microstructure models can be exported in different formats, either as lists of particle centre coordinates and radii or as input scripts for generating solid geometric models or regular hexahedral meshes (voxel meshes) in the commercial finite-element software Abaqus™ or similar preprocessors. Mote3D reports basic statistical information on the generated microstructure models such as particle diameter distribution and nearest neighbour inter-particle distances.

References

Richter, Henning (2017) Mote3D: an open-source toolbox for modelling periodic random particulate microstructures. Modelling Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng. 25 (3), 035011, doi: 10.1088/1361-651X/aa629a (DLR elib entry).

Richter, Henning (2019) Random porous microstructure modelling with the Mote3D toolbox – approach and applications. Sitzung des Arbeitskreises Mikrostrukturmechanik im DGM-Fachausschuss Computersimulation, Mai 2019, DLR Köln.

Installation

Mote3D requires GNU Octave version 4.2.0 or earlier. If a later version is used, additional installation of the GNU Octave statistics package may be required for some features. Download the latest release of Mote3D and unpack the folder to the GNU Octave working directory. Additional information on how to set up and run Mote3D can be found in the Mote3D User Guide.

Documentation

Further details on the implementation and some case studies are outlined in this paper. Additional examples are given in the Mote3D wiki.

License

Mote3D is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

mote3d_toolbox's Issues

Cube Creation in Abaqus

Hey,
So after importing the respective .py script into Abaqus and running the script, the particles are generated but not merged to one full part/cube, any clues as to how to do it? Thank you.

particulate composite microstructure

I tried to create a particulate composite microstructure with a variance of diameter as zero (eg picture as shown in the first page github MOTE3D) by merging with a cube. I face merge error always. I tried with vol fraction of 0.1 and 0.25. Any help or directions I should try in this regard would be useful. Generating a porous microstructure is very easy by using cut option of ABAQUS in the assembly module.

Originally posted by @tarkesdora in #6 (comment)

Parsing target volume fraction to Mote3D

Hi,
I was going through the main subroutine of Mote3D_toolbox. Are there any available extensions/modifications of the current code wherein the desired volume fraction could be parsed to the function (as opposed to the number of trials) as a stopping criteria? For instance, the current inputs just include the number of spheres and maximum number of trials required to place the spheres, as the stopping criteria ?

Thanks

Paraview Visualization

How to export the model in to ABAQUS?

Hi.

After generating the particles in some specific RVE, how we could access to "Dialog box for export format specification"? It doesn't appear to me. Should we install some particular library?
I'll be thankful if you guide me step by step.

Thank you

Images for Wiki