CFD Direct

The Architects of OpenFOAM

CFD Resources and Articles

Sustainable OpenFOAM Development

Sustainable OpenFOAM Development

OpenFOAM is free, open source software for computational fluid dynamics (CFD). At the heart of OpenFOAM is a development kit (“SDK”), providing software and tools to build CFD applications, enabling users to customise their CFD, quickly and conveniently. CFD Direct includes OpenFOAM developers who maintain the SDK. We manage an environment for sustainable OpenFOAM development that involves: early public code release with rapid-turnaround user feedback; a network of developers, funding companies and users; and, co-ordinated code integration and maintenance.

OpenFOAM v5 Training

OpenFOAM v5 Training

In Autumn 2017, CFD Direct are running their OpenFOAM Training courses — Essential CFD, Applied CFD and Programming CFD — fully updated with the latest features of the new version 5 release of OpenFOAM. Essential and Applied CFD courses are available: 25-28 Sep, London UK, and 16-19 Oct, Chicago USA with limited places via the Internet; 6-9 November, Munich Germany. Programming CFD is available 12-13 Sep and 3-4 Oct as Virtual Training. We use new features in OpenFOAM v5 to give our participants the confidence to carry out CFD analysis, repeatedly, to a defined standard in a timely manner.

CFDDFC Command Line Interface

cfddfc launch

CFD Direct From the Cloud (CFDDFC) is our established platform for running OpenFOAM, ParaView and supporting software using cloud computing. We are pleased to announce the release of our CFDDFC command line interface (CLI) for quick, simple, deployment of OpenFOAM CFD workloads with CFDDFC on Amazon EC2. The CLI is a simple shell script named “cfddfc” that users can follow a few short short steps to get running. It uses EC2 Spot Instances by default, and provides cost estimates for data transfer to help users run workloads at lowest cost.

Water Waves in OpenFOAM

Water waves in OpenFOAM

In May 2017, we implemented water wave modelling into the public, development line of OpenFOAM (OpenFOAM-dev), to simulate flow conditions experienced in marine and offshore engineering, e.g. on a ship in open water. The initial implementation includes the first order Airy wave and the second order Stokes wave (Stokes II), a second-order accurate utility to apply waves for case initialisation to the entire domain. A verticalDamping source (fvOption) provides wave damping towards outlet regions and an interfaceHeight function object processes interface elevation at specified locations.

OpenFOAM Barycentric Tracking

Cyclone streamlines

In April 2017, we added barycentric tracking into the public, development line of OpenFOAM (OpenFOAM-dev), as a complete replacement to the tracking algorithm that existed in OpenFOAM for over 10 years. Barycentric tracking works on any decomposed tet mesh, irrespective of mesh quality, including poor quality, flat and inverted tetrahedra. The new development was funded from the €100 k for OpenFOAM maintenance, raised through the OpenFOAM Foundation in 2017, in which “particles and tracking” was identified as an area in OpenFOAM “requiring significant code refactoring and/or rewriting”.

CFD Direct Year 2: 2016-2017

CFD Direct Year 2: 2016-2017

At the end of Year 2 of CFD Direct, we summarise our principal activities as the primary contributor to OpenFOAM. We developed new functionality, producing OpenFOAM v4.0 and v4.1, maintaining the OpenFOAM code base, documentation, websites and other infrastructure — where we contributed 1300 man-hours of work in-kind. We delivered 55 days of OpenFOAM Training — Essential, Applied and Programming CFD — as scheduled classroom courses, live virtual training and on-site. We released new versions of our cloud CFD platform, CFD Direct From the Cloud (CFDDFC), and became and Advanced Technology Partner of Amazon Web Services.