New in 3.1

Iv (Itasca viewer) — a new optional feature — is an alternative viewport for PFC3D that dramatically increases plot rendering speed and quality and also allows remote operation of the code.

Movies of PFC output can now be generated in two media formats (AVI and DCX).

Periodic boundaries are available. When activated, the particle assembly is in a periodic space whereby particles exiting one side also enter the opposing side.

The Fluid Analysis Option allows users to simulate fluid coupling problems as a two-way interaction between balls and fluid.

AC/DC (Adaptive Continuum/Discontinuum) logic is a way to handle very large models of bonded material. A "pbrick" is derived from a compacted assembly created in periodic space. Pbricks may be represented as matrices to save computation time and memory. Pbricks may also be distributed arbitrarily among a number of processors, using MPI. The AC/DC logic is only applicable to models in which deformations are small, and may be used with or without the Parallel Processing Option and/or the C++/UDM Option.

MPI (Message Passing Interface) is a new capability added to the Parallel Processing Option, allowing multiple PFC runs to communicate within the AC/DC logic or within the C++ code option.

New general walls are available: point walls in PFC2D and line and torus walls in PFC3D.

Network key facility allows mutiple instances of PFC to use a single hardware key on a central (server) computer.