KRATOS Multiphysics ("Kratos") is a framework for building parallel, multi-disciplinary simulation software, aiming at modularity, extensibility, and high performance. Kratos is written in C++, and counts with an extensive Python interface. More in Overview

Kratos is free under BSD-4 license and can be used even in commercial software as it is. Many of its main applications are also free and BSD-4 licensed but each derived application can have its own proprietary license.

Main Features

Kratos is multiplatform and available for Windows, Linux (several distros) and macOS.

Kratos is OpenMP and MPI parallel and scalable up to thousands of cores.

Kratos provides a core which defines the common framework and several application which work like plug-ins that can be extended in diverse fields.

Its main applications are:

• DEM for cohesive and non cohesive spheric and non spheric particles simulation
• Fluid Dynamics Provides 2D and 3D incompressible fluids formulation
• Fluid Structure Interaction for solution of different FSI problems
• Structural Mechanics Providing solution for solid, shell and beam structures with linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic behavior
• Contact Structural Mechanics For contact problems used along the Structural Mechanics application

Some main modules are:

• Linear Solvers
• Trilinos
• Metis
• Meshing

Documentation

Here you can find the basic documentation of the project:

Getting Started

• Getting Kratos (Last compiled Release)
  • Kratos from pip: Just simply type on terminal pip install KratosMultiphysics-all
  • Kratos for GiD

• Compiling Kratos
  • See INSTALL.md

Tutorials

• Running an example from GiD
• Kratos input files and I/O
• Data management
• Solving strategies
• Manipulating solution values
• Multiphysics

More documentation

Documentation

Examples of use

Kratos has been used for simulation of many different problems in a wide variety of disciplines ranging from wind over singular building to granular domain dynamics. Some examples and validation benchmarks simulated by Kratos can be found here

Barcelona Wind Simulation

Contributors

Organizations contributing to Kratos:

International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering

Chair of Structural Analysis
Technical University of Munich

Altair Engineering

Deltares

Institute of Structural Analysis
Technische Universität Braunschweig

University of Padova, Italy

Our Users

Some users of the technologies developed in Kratos are:

Airbus Defence and Space
Stress Methods & Optimisation Department

Siemens AG
Corporate Technology

ONERA, The French Aerospace Lab
Applied Aerodynamics Department

🤗 Looking forward to seeing your logo here!

Special Thanks To

In Kratos Core:

• Boost for uBLAS
• pybind11 for exposing C++ to python
• GidPost providing output to GiD
• AMGCL for its highly scalable multigrid solver
• JSON JSON for Modern C++
• ZLib The compression library
• Google Test for unit testing C++ code
• Google Benchmark for microbenchmarking and performance testing

In applications:

• Eigen For linear solvers used in the LinearSolversApplication
• Trilinos for MPI linear algebra and solvers used in TrilinosApplication
• METIS for partitioning in MetisApplication
• CoSimIO for performing coupled simulations with external solvers within the CoSimulationApplication. The CoSimIO in Kratos uses the following libraries:
  • Boost for the intrusive_ptr
  • filesystem Header-only single-file std::filesystem compatible helper library, based on the C++17 specs
  • asio for socket based interprocess communication

How to cite Kratos?

Please, use the following references when citing Kratos in your work.

• Dadvand, P., Rossi, R. & Oñate, E. An Object-oriented Environment for Developing Finite Element Codes for Multi-disciplinary Applications. Arch Computat Methods Eng 17, 253–297 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11831-010-9045-2
• Dadvand, P., Rossi, R., Gil, M., Martorell, X., Cotela, J., Juanpere, E., Idelsohn, S., Oñate, E. (2013). Migration of a generic multi-physics framework to HPC environments. Computers & Fluids. 80. 301–309. 10.1016/j.compfluid.2012.02.004.
• Vicente Mataix Ferrándiz, Philipp Bucher, Rubén Zorrilla, Suneth Warnakulasuriya, Alejandro Cornejo, Riccardo Rossi, Carlos Roig, jcotela, Josep Maria, tteschemacher, Miguel Masó, Guillermo Casas, Marc Núñez, Pooyan Dadvand, Salva Latorre, Ignasi De Pouplana, Joaquín Irazábal González, AFranci, Ferran Arrufat, riccardotosi, Aditya Ghantasala, Klaus Sautter, Peter Wilson, dbaumgaertner, Bodhinanda Chandra, Armin Geiser, Máté Kelemen, lluís, Inigo Lopez, jgonzalezusua. (2025). KratosMultiphysics/Kratos: Release v10.2.3 (v10.2.3). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15687676