PFC5 Coupling

Use this skill when a PFC5 asphalt study requires fluid forces, pore pressure, seepage, buoyancy, or discrete-continuum handoff.

Required Inputs

• PFC2D/PFC3D 5.0 and coupled product/version/license;
• coupling type, units, physics assumptions and update direction;
• mesh/boundary/interface data and coordinate mapping;
• fluid density/viscosity or continuum material/state variables;
• exchange interval, conservation checks and validation targets.

Workflow

1. Decide whether a simpler prescribed force/pressure boundary is sufficient.
2. Freeze the coupling contract in JSON using coupling-contract.md.
3. Validate paths, units, fields and intervals with scripts/validate_coupling_contract.py.
4. Test one-way exchange on a minimal licensed PFC5 case.
5. Add two-way iteration only after sign, scale and conservation checks pass.
6. Export exchanged fields, residuals, timestamps and restart state.
7. Run mesh/update-interval/boundary sensitivity and physical validation.

Working Rules

• This skill does not bundle DLLs, commercial examples or unverified command files.
• Do not assume a coupling API from another major version exists in PFC5.
• PFC and continuum meshes need an explicit coordinate, unit and sign mapping.
• A file-level contract check is not a coupled runtime validation.

Output Contract

Return the JSON contract, external dependencies, mapping tables, validation report, exchange/residual histories, sensitivity results and runtime status.

Local Contents

• references/coupling-contract.md — portable coupling schema.
• scripts/validate_coupling_contract.py — deterministic contract validator.
• agents/openai.yaml — interface metadata.