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Mote3D is an adaptable, easy-to-use open-source software toolbox for the generation of random particulate microstructure models with periodic boundaries. Mote3D can be used to generate virtual models that represent the microstructure of various inhomogeneous engineering materials such as particle-reinforced composites, partially sintered ceramics, powders, open-cell foams or concrete aggregates, as well as of certain nanomaterials, biomaterials or scaffolds. These models can be employed, for example, to analyse the relation between microstructure and overall mechanical, electrical or thermal properties by virtual materials testing.

The Mote3D toolbox works by randomly positioning spherical particles with user-defined minimum inter-particle distance in a cubical computational domain. The generated microstructure models can be exported in different formats, either as lists of particle centre coordinates and radii or as input scripts for generating solid geometric models or regular hexahedral meshes (voxel meshes) in the commercial finite-element software Abaqus™ or similar preprocessors. Mote3D reports basic statistical information on the generated microstructure models such as particle diameter distribution and nearest neighbour inter-particle distances.

Richter, Henning (2017) Mote3D: an open-source toolbox for modelling periodic random particulate microstructures. Modelling Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng. 25 (3), 035011, doi: 10.1088/1361-651X/aa629a (elib entry).

Richter, Henning (2019) Random porous microstructure modelling with the Mote3D toolbox – approach and applications. Sitzung des Arbeitskreises Mikrostrukturmechanik im DGM-Fachausschuss Computersimulation, Mai 2019, DLR Köln.

Mote3D requires GNU Octave version 4.2.0 or earlier. If a later version is used, additional installation of the GNU Octave statistics package may be required for some features. Download the latest release of Mote3D and unpack the folder to the GNU Octave working directory. Additional information on how to set up and run Mote3D can be found in the Mote3D User Guide.

Further details on the implementation and some case studies are outlined in this paper. Additional examples are given in the Mote3D wiki.

Mote3D is licensed under the GNU General Public License.