What is PROJECTCHRONO?
PROJECTCHRONO is a multi-physics modelling and simulation infrastructure based on a platform-independent, open-source design.
The core of PROJECTCHRONO is the Chrono::Engine middleware, a C++ object-oriented library which can be used to perform multi-physics simulations, including multibody and finite element analysis.
Among the other components of the PROJECTCHRONO ecosystems are:
- Chrono::Vehicle, which provides support for vehicle modeling and simulation
- Chrono::Sensor, which provides support for sensor modeling and simulation
- Chrono::FSI, which provides support for Fluid-Solid Interaction problems
- Chrono::Gpu, a library for GPU-enabled granular dynamics simulation in Chrono
- Chrono::Multicore, a library for enabling multi-core parallel computation in Chrono
- Chrono::Distributed, a library for enabling MPI distributed parallel granular computation in Chrono
- Synchrono, a library for distributed agent simulation
- Chrono::PardisoMKL and
Chrono::PardisoProject, which provide interfaces to the PARDISO sparse direct linear solver
- Chrono::MUMPS, which provides an interface to the MUMPS sparse direct linear solver
- Chrono::Cascade, a library which provides CAD interoperability with Open Cascade
- Chrono::SolidWorks, an add-in for SolidWorks® which can be used to export 3D models and geometries from a CAD file into Chrono
PyChrono is a Python package which wraps several of the Chrono modules and allows using Chrono from Python.
Technical Leads
- Alessandro Tasora - Associate Professor, University of Parma, Italy
- Radu Serban - Senior Scientist, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
- Dan Negrut - Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Key Project Chrono Developers
- Asher Elmquist - PhD Student, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
- Luning Fang - PhD Student, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
- Wei Hu - Assistant Scientist, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
- Mike Taylor - PhD Student, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
- Colin Vanden Heuvel - Staff, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
- Aaron Young - Student, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
- Ruochun Zhang - PhD Student, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
- Jason Zhou - Student, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Past developers
- Dr. Simone Benatti - former University of Parma student and UW-Madison postdoc, now at VisLab
- Dr. Toby Heyn - former UW-Madison student, now at Epic Systems
- Dr. Justin Madsen - former UW-Madison student, now at Oshkosh Corporation
- Dr. Dario Mangoni - former University of Parma student, now at Altair
- Dr. Hammad Mazhar - former UW-Madison student, now at NVIDIA
- Dr. Dan Melanz - former UW-Madison student, now at Energid
- Dr. Arman Pazouki - former UW-Madison Assistant Scientist, now at Northwestern University
- Dr. Milad Rakhsha - former UW-Madison PhD student, now at Roblox
- Dr. Antonio Recuero - former UW-Madison Assistant Scientist, now at Idaho National Lab
- Dylan Hatch - former UW-Madison CS undergraduate student, now at Google
- Conlain Kelly - former UW-Madison undergraduate student, now grad student at Georgia Tech
- Nic Olsen - former UW-Madison student, now at Oshkosh Corporation
- Andrew Seidl - former UW-Madison student, now at MapD
- Jay Taves - former UW-Madison student, now at Accuray
HISTORY
The first version of the Chrono::Engine was developed in 1998 by Prof. Alessandro Tasora when he was a student at the Politecnico di Milano. It was the result of a thesis in Mechanical Engineering. Originally, Chrono::Engine was meant to be a multibody simulation tool for robotics and biomechanics applications.
Until 2002, Chrono::Engine was tightly linked to the Realsoft3D modeller. In 2002-2005 the software was gradually reorganized in the form of a standalone library, just like it is today. Alessandro started working in 2005 with Prof. Mihai Anitescu from University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratories. Their work strengthened the handling of large frictional contact models in Chrono.
Prof. Dan Negrut joined the Project Chrono effort in 2007. The members of Simulation-Based Engineering Lab (SBEL) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been active in its development ever since.
Dr. Radu Serban started working on the Project Chrono effort in 2013, at the time he joined UW-Madison and the Simulation-Based Engineering Lab.
We took the decision to release Chrono as open source in 2013, when we started to use the name PROJECTCHRONO to recognize the fact that this software infrastructure had become a multi-physics simulation engine. In 2014, the US Army decided to invest US $1.8 million over a two year period to further develop Chrono as an open source platform for physics-based modelling and simulation. Recent investments that will augment Chrono include US $1.0 million from National Science Foundation (2019-2023), US $0.4 million from US Army Research Office (2019-2023), US $1.5 million from U.S Army GVSC and ERDC (2019-2022). The current version of Chrono is 7.0.1 and it was released in November of 2021.
Copyright and License
Chrono is copyrighted by PROJECTCHRONO and is released under a BSD-3 license.