
Overview
PRISMS-PF is a powerful, massively parallel finite element code for conducting phase field and other related simulations of microstructural evolution. The phase field method is commonly used for predicting the evolution if microstructures under a wide range of conditions and material systems. PRISMS-PF provides a simple interface for solving customizable systems of partial differential equations of the type commonly found in phase field models, and has 29 pre-built application modules, including for precipitate evolution, grain growth, dendritic solidification, corrosion and spinodal decomposition.

Features and Capabilities
- Matrix-free finite element framework for improved performance over traditional finite element approaches
- Parallelization at the inter-node, intra-node, and intra-core levels (MPI, threads, vectorization), with near ideal scaling beyond 1,000 cores
- Adaptive meshing to greatly reduce problem sizes
- Support for high order elements, with up to 5th order spatial accuracy
- Support for explicit nucleus placement to enable simulations that include nucleating phases
- Grain-remapping algorithm to facilitate simulations of polycrystals with thousands of grains
- Simple interface to solve an arbitrary number of coupled PDEs
- Straightforward Docker-based installation
General Links
Getting Started
Getting Help
Announcements
- 8/16/2025: Version 3.0.0-rc1 released. This version is a pre-release of v3.0.0, a major update from v2.4.2. The core library has been rewritten to accommodateate certain features and reduce technical debt, increasing the longevity of our project. The main changes are improvements in performance (including the use of new numerical methods to solve partial differential equations) and new applications. For a full list of changes in this version, please consult the v3.0.0-rc1 pre-release document. Note that certain features such as grain remapping and nucleation haven’t been implemented. Additionally, the user-interface and documentation haven’t been finalized or updated, so new users may struggle. However, we are still working on porting capabilities from v2.4. These will come out in more pre-release candidates in the coming weeks.
- 2/27/2025: Version 2.4.1 released. This version is a minor update from 2.3. The main changes are minor bug fixes, compatibility with clang, gcc, and intel-oneapi compilers that support the c++17 standard, and the requirement to use deal.II version 9.5.0 or later. For a full list of changes in this version, please consult the v2.4.1 release document.
- 1/11/2024: Version 2.4 released. This version is a moderate update from 2.3. The main changes are compatibility with deal.II 9.6.0, support for the use of up to 6th order elements, improved testing and continuous integration, code auto-formatting, and bug fixes. For a detailed discussion of the new features, bug fixes and other changes in this version, please consult the version_changes.md document.
Acknowledgements
This code is developed by the PRedictive Integrated Structural Materials Science (PRISMS) Center at University of Michigan which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Award #DE-SC0008637.
License
PRISMS-PF is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
Citing PRISMS-PF
Please cite the following reference when discussing PRISMS-PF in a publication:
S. DeWitt, S. Rudraraju, D. Montiel, W.B. Andrews, and K. Thornton. PRISMS-PF: A general framework for phase-field modeling with a matrix-free finite element method. npj Computational Materials 6, 29 (2020).
If additionally you would like to cite a specific release of PRISMS-PF, please use the following format:
PRISMS-PF, v2.1.2 (2019). Available from https://github.com/prisms-center/phaseField. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3357005.
For DOI information for other releases, please refer to this site.
Publications That Use PRISMS-PF
Wang and Liu, Multiscale thermo-kinetic characterization for β′ and β1 precipitation in Mg-Sm alloys, Acta Mater. 254, 119011 (2023)
Pendl and Hochrainer, Coupling stress fields and vacancy diffusion in phase-field models of voids as pure vacancy phase, Comput. Mater. Sci. 224, 112157 (2023)
Goel, Lyu, DeWitt, Montiel, and Thornton, Simulating microgalvanic corrosion in alloys using the PRISMS phase-field framework, MRS Communications 12, 1050–1059 (2022)
Bhagat and Rudraraju, Modeling of dendritic solidification and numerical analysis of the
phase-field approach to model complex morphologies in alloys, arXiv preprint (2022)
Kinzer and Chandran, A Phase-Field Study on the Effects of Nanoparticles on Solidification and Grain Growth, arXiv preprint (2022)
Gao, Wang, Li, et al,, Cerium-alloyed ultra-high strength maraging steel with good ductility: Experiments, first-principles calculations and phase-field simulations, Materials Science and Engineering: A 846, 14330 (2022)
Yao, Montiel, and Allison, Investigating the Effects of Dendrite Evolution on Microsegregation in Al–Cu Alloys by Coupling Experiments, Micro-modeling, and Phase-Field Simulations. Metall Mater Trans A 53, 3341–3356 (2022)
Cao, Zhang, Meng, and Zhang, Analyzing effects of temperature gradient and scan rate on metal additive manufacturing microstructure by using phase field-finite element method, Modelling Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng. 30, 034003 (2022)
Brewick, Simulating Pitting Corrosion in AM 316L Microstructures Through Phase Field Methods and Computational Modeling, J. Electrochem. Soc. 169, 011503 (2022)
*DeWitt, Rudraraju, Montiel, Andrews and Thornton, PRISMS-PF: A general framework for phase-field modeling with a matrix-free finite element method, npj Comput Mater 6, 29 (2020)
Aagesen, Adams, Allison, et al., PRISMS: An Integrated, Open-Source Framework for Accelerating Predictive Structural Materials Science, JOM 70, 2298–2314 (2018)
DeWitt, Solomon, Natarajan, Araullo-Peters, Rudraraju, Aagesen, Puchala, Marquis, Van der Ven, Thornton, and Allison, Misfit-driven β′′′ precipitate composition and morphology in Mg-Nd alloys, Acta Materialia, 136, 378-389 (2017)
* Please use this publication as the standard reference when citing PRISMS-PF.
Note: If you use PRISMS-PF in one of your publications, please send the publication information to prismsphasefield.dev@umich.edu to help us demonstrate our impact to our funding agency.
Publications That Cite PRISMS-PF
Gao, Peng, Zhang, et al., Profound strengthening and toughening effect of reinforcement aspect ratio in composite with network architecture, Journal of Alloys and Compounds, 167444 (2022)
Endo, Matsuda, Tanaka, et al., A phase-field model by an Ising machine and its application to the phase-separation structure of a diblock polymer, Sci Rep 12, 10794 (2022)
Stewart, Recent progress on the mesoscale modeling of architected thin-films via phase-field formulations of physical vapor deposition, Computational Materials Science 211, 111503 (2022)
Hong and Viswanathan, Open-Sourcing Phase-Field Simulations for Accelerating Energy Materials Design and Optimization, ACS Energy Letters 2020 5, 3254-3259 (10)
DeWitt and Thornton, Phase Field Modeling of Microstructural Evolution in Computational Materials System Design, Shin and Saal, Eds., Springer Nature, London (2018)
Yaghoobi, Ganesan, Sundar, Lakshmanan, Rudraraju, Allison, and Sundararaghavan, PRISMS-Plasticity: An open-source crystal plasticity finite element software, Computational Materials Science 169, 109078 (2019)
Wheeler, Keller, DeWitt, Jokisaari, Schwen, Guyer, Aagesen, Heinonen, Tonks, Voorhees, and Warren, 2019. PFHub: The Phase-Field Community Hub. Journal of Open Research Software, 7(1), 29 (2019)
Hötzer, Reiter, Hierl, Steinmetz, Selzer, and Nestler, The parallel multi-physics phase-field framework Pace3D, Journal of Computational Science 26, 1-12 (2018)
Tonks and Aagesen, The Phase Field Method: Mesoscale Simulation Aiding Material DiscoveryAnnual Review of Materials Research 49, 79–102 (2019)