GprMax has been developed as a result of my DPhil work at the Department of Electronics of the Univerisity of York on GPR modelling. This work involved the use ot two numerical methods popular in solving time domain computational electromagnetics problems. The techniques I used were the Transmission Line Matrix (TLM) and the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD). I have created a number of "research" codes which were rather difficult to be used by other people. If you are interested in this a copy of my thesis is available in the download area. The thesis has nothing to do with GprMax but explains the basics of GPR modelling.

When I was finishing up my doctoral work researchers from the Building Research Establishment (BRE)  contacted me and wanted to use my research codes for a GPR project. We finally realised that creating a manual and making these "rough" codes to function, without the need - as a user - to know a lot about programming and doing any editing of the source code, would have taken more time than develop a new FDTD based model. This programme was called GprMax. The name is made up from GPR and the three first letters of the name of the founder of modern electromagentics James Clerk Maxwell.

Since then (1996) GprMax has been further developed by myself at the University of Edinburgh - where I am curently a Lecturer - at the School of Engineering and Electronics. GprMax was released for general free use in 2001. First, was the 2D model made available and later on the 3D. I continue to develop GprMax as part of my research activities in the use of GPR for non-destructive testing of structures and other civil engineering related geophysical problems where GPR could be applicable.

GprMax has a license that allows you to use it for either research or commercial applicaitons. The source code will - eventually - be made available under the GPL. However, until then if you need to work with the source code you need to contact me and ask for it.

At this point, I would like to thank the Building Research Establishment (BRE), for providing me with the financial support to develop the first version of GprMax. Without their support which helped to develop the core of the GprMax2D and GprMax3D programmes this release today would not have been possible.