CFD Direct

The Architects of OpenFOAM

CFD Resources and Articles

AWS HPC Competency 2021

AWS HPC Competency 2021

CFD Direct Limited has become one of the first approved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partners to achieve High Performance Computing (HPC) Competency status. This designation recognises that CFD Direct has demonstrated deep experience helping customers optimise their computational fluid dynamics (CFD) workloads on AWS. Using CFD Direct From the Cloud™ (CFDDFC®), engineers and scientists can launch instances, pre-configured with OpenFOAM, in minutes — with up to 48 processors and clusters of 100s of processors.

Remote CFD with OpenFOAM

Remote CFD with OpenFOAM

With restricted access to the workplace, a CFD engineer can be productive by quickly switching to remote CFD using CFD Direct From the Cloud™ (CFDDFC®) and by learning effective CFD. CFDDFC is a turnkey system with OpenFOAM and supporting software running in its native Linux environment on AWS. Engineers can launch remote instances (virtual machines) in 2 minutes providing remote desktop access to 48 core instances and scalable clusters of 100s of cores. At the same time the engineer can learn to be more productive by registering for our Live Virtual OpenFOAM Training, taken from the safety and comfort of their home using the CFDDFC system.

OpenFOAM v8 Training 2021

OpenFOAM Training 2021

In Spring/Summer 2021, CFD Direct is running its OpenFOAM Training courses — Essential CFD, Applied CFD and Programming CFD — fully updated with the latest features of the new version 8 release of OpenFOAM. The training uses new features in OpenFOAM v8 for more productive and effective CFD. All courses are delivered as live virtual training due to Covid-19 travel restrictions in 2021. Essential and Applied CFD courses are available: 1-5 Feb, 15-19 Mar, 26-30 Apr. Programming CFD is available 26-28 Jan, 23-25 Feb, 23-25 Mar, 18-20 May.

Redesigning OpenFOAM for the Future

OpenFOAM Redesign

In 2020, CFD Direct were tasked to develop multicomponent diffusion modelling in OpenFOAM with funding from the Process Engineering Consortium. The Consortium need models, e.g. Maxwell-Stefan, that represent complex diffusion of species in fluid mixtures, affecting both specie concentration and energy. As part of the work, we created a new ThermophysicalTransportModels library with a new interfaces for: fluxes of heat, q() and divq(); and fluxes of mass, j() and divj(). As a consequence, heat transfer became consistent across applications, boundary conditions and data processing. This critical code redesign is typical of our strategy for sustainable development of OpenFOAM, supported by dedicated maintenance funding from OpenFOAM supporters.

CFDDFC® v8 for Azure

CFDDFC® v8 for Azure

CFD Direct is pleased to announce the release of version 8 of CFD Direct From the Cloud™ (CFDDFC®) for Microsoft Azure. Available from the Azure Marketplace, CFDDFC v8 includes OpenFOAM v8, ParaView v5.6.0, OpenMPI v2.1.1 and FreeCAD v0.18.3, running on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Users can launch pay-as-you-go VMs from the image in minutes and connect via remote desktop or terminal login using SSH. Azure offers a wide range of VM types including the compute-optimised F-series with up to 36 physical cores (F72sv2) and the high performance computing H-series.

CFDDFC (Arm) for AWS C6g

CFDDFC (Arm) for AWS C6g

CFD Direct has launched CFDDFC® (Arm), a marketplace product on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with OpenFOAM. CFDDFC (Arm) is a variant of CFD Direct From the Cloud™ for Amazon EC2 instances running Arm-based Graviton2 processors, in particular the C6g instances for compute-intensive workloads. CFDDFC (Arm) operates in server-mode without graphical applications and includes OpenFOAM 7 and OpenMPI 4.0.3 running on Ubuntu Server for Arm 20.04 LTS. For batch CFD jobs with guaranteed access on-demand, users can save 35% on their EC2 costs with C6g instances.