Getting Started

Obtaining µSpectre

µSpectre is hosted on a git repository on gitlab. To clone it, run

$ git clone https://gitlab.com/muspectre/muspectre.git

or if you prefer identifying yourself using a public ssh-key, run

$ git clone git@gitlab.com:muspectre/muspectre.git

The latter option requires you to have a user account on gitlab (create).

Building µSpectre

You can compile µSpectre using CMake (3.1.0 or higher). The current (and possibly incomplete list of) dependencies are

Recommended:

  • Sphinx and Breathe (necessary if you want to build the documentation (turned off by default)

  • Eigen (3.3.0 or higher). If you do not install this, it will be downloaded automatically at configuration time, so this is not strictly necessary. The download can be slow, though, so we recommend installing it on your system.

  • The CMake curses graphical user interface (ccmake).

µSpectre requires a relatively modern compiler as it makes heavy use of C++14

features. It has successfully been compiled and tested using the following compilers under Linux

  • gcc-7.2

  • gcc-6.4

  • gcc-5.4

  • clang-6.0

  • clang-5.0

  • clang-4.0

and using clang-4.0 under MacOS.

It does not compile on Intel’s most recent compiler, as it is still lacking some C++14 support. Work-arounds are planned, but will have to wait for someone to pick up the task.

To compile, create a build folder and configure the CMake project. If you do this in the folder you cloned in the previous step, it can look for instance like this:

$ mkdir build-release
$ cd build-release
$ ccmake ..

Then, set the build type to Release to produce optimised code. µSpectre makes heavy use of expression templates, so optimisation is paramount. (As an example, the performance difference between code compiled in Debug and Release is about a factor 40 in simple linear elasticity.)

Finally, compile the library and the tests by running

$ make -j <NB-OF-PROCESSES>

Warning

When using the -j option to compile, be aware that compiling µSpectre uses quite a bit of RAM. If your machine start swapping at compile time, reduce the number of parallel compilations

Running µSpectre

The easiest and intended way of using µSpectre is through its Python bindings. The following simple example computes the response of a two-dimensional stretched periodic RVE cell. The cell consist of a soft matrix with a circular hard inclusion.

More examples both python and c++ executables can be found in the /bin folder.

Getting help

µSpectre is in a very early stage of development and the documentation is

currently spotty. Also, there is no FAQ page yet. If you run into trouble, please contact us by opening an issue and someone will answer as soon as possible. You can also check the API Reference.

Reporting Bugs

If you think you found a bug, you are probably right. Please report it! The preferred way is for you to create a task on µSpectre’s workboard and assign it to user junge. Include steps to reproduce the bug if possible. Someone will answer as soon as possible.

Contribute

We welcome contributions both for new features and bug fixes. New features must be documented and have unit tests. Please submit merge requests for review. More detailed guidelines for submissions will follow soonᵀᴹ.