Mérope: A microstructure generator for simulation of heterogeneous materials

Mérope is a software devoted to the geometrical design and the discretization of microstructures of random heterogeneous materials. Mérope aims at building large samples of microstructured materials, called Representative Volume Elements, in order to derive their effective physical behaviors. Various microstructures are supported: spherical, polyhedral or spheropolyhedral inclusions, polycrystals, Gaussian fields and Boolean combinations of these. Discretization takes two forms: either regular Cartesian grids of (composite) voxels for computations with FFT-based solvers, or tetrahedral meshes for computations with Finite Element solvers. A special emphasis on the code has been put on performance, which will be further improved in the future. This article aims at introducing the main features of the software as well as exemplifying its use. •Mérope is a software devoted to simulating random heterogeneous materials.•It builds Representative Volume Elements of microstructured materials.•Various microstructures are supported (polycrystals, inclusions, random fields).•Various discretizations are supported (voxelation and tetrahedral meshes).