2026-08-13 –, Room 5
Peridynamics.jl is a Julia package for dynamic fracture simulations that supports multithreading and MPI for high-performance computing. This talk focuses on how researchers in peridynamics can adapt the package to their own models rather than on the internal development of the code base. We show how Julia's multiple dispatch and type system make it straightforward to implement custom material models, damage criteria, and boundary conditions, while the package handles parallelism and I/O. The goal is to give researchers a practical starting point for their own extensions, attracting more users to the package and to the Julia ecosystem in general.
Peridynamics is a nonlocal continuum formulation that is particularly useful for simulating crack propagation, fragmentation, and similar discontinuous phenomena. We developed Peridynamics.jl with high-performance computing in mind, but for the peridynamics community it is just as important that the package can be adapted to specific research questions without too much effort.
In this talk, we show how the extension interface of the package works in practice. To implement a new material model, users only need to define the routines that describe the constitutive behavior. Parallel execution, halo exchange between MPI ranks and threads, and output are handled by the package. The same approach can be used for custom contact laws, damage criteria, boundary conditions, and post-processing callbacks. Since extensions are ordinary Julia types and methods, they compose naturally with the models that are already available. For example, users can set up multi-material simulations that combine built-in and user-defined formulations without modifying the package itself. Users can also use the built-in methods for parameter studies and post-processing, allowing for a seamless workflow from model definition to results analysis.
We go through specific examples and show how a constitutive formulation can be turned into a working parallel simulation with only a small amount of Julia code. We also discuss the design decisions behind this extensibility and how Julia helps make Peridynamics.jl a flexible research tool for the peridynamics community.
PhD Candidate, University of Siegen, Germany
Specializing in solid mechanics, with a focus on dynamic fracture, peridynamics, phase-field modeling, and continuum mechanics.