Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) workbench using OpenFOAM

A subforum specific to the development of the OpenFoam-based workbenches ( Cfd https://github.com/qingfengxia/Cfd and CfdOF https://github.com/jaheyns/CfdOF )

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oliveroxtoby
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Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) workbench using OpenFOAM

Post by oliveroxtoby »

Dear all

We have created a fork of the CFD workbench of Qingfeng Xia (https://github.com/qingfengxia/Cfd.git). The aim of this wokbench is to assist OpenFOAM beginners to get up and running rather than to provide advanced functionality (such as fluid-structure interaction). After discussion of the different philosophies we felt that a fork was maybe warranted. Our version with installation instructions can be obtained from https://github.com/jaheyns/CfdOF (Edited: The name has been changed from Cfd to CfdOF to allow the fork to coexist with the original).

Current functionality:

* Incompressible, laminar flow (simpleFoam).
* Basic material data base.
* Flow initialisation with a potential solver.
* Tetrahedral meshing using GMSH including multiregion meshing (using FEM workbench functionality).
* Post processing using paraview.
* Porous regions and porous baffles.
* Runs on Windows 7-10 (https://opensimsa.github.io/download.html, see CFD)
* Unit testing

Planned developments for 2017:

* Cut-cell Cartesian meshing with boundary layers.
* Extension to turbulent using RANS (k-w SST).
* Conjugate heat transfer.

We have created step-by-step training material for the workbench at https://opensimsa.github.io/training.html

Any comments and feedback will be appreciated.
cfdWb.png
cfdWb.png (117.19 KiB) Viewed 34132 times
Last edited by oliveroxtoby on Thu Dec 28, 2017 3:15 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Please provide all the information requested in this post before reporting problems with CfdOF.
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r-frank
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Re: Fork of CFD workbench

Post by r-frank »

Hello Oliver.

Sounds really great.
Weather forecast for upcoming weekend is rainy so chances are good i may find time for a test ride ...

Roland
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Native german speaker - so apologies for my english, no offense intended :)
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Re: Fork of CFD workbench

Post by HoWil »

Dear oliver,
oliveroxtoby wrote:The aim of this wokbench is to assist OpenFOAM beginners to get up and running rather than to provide advanced functionality (such as fluid-structure interaction).
That is in my opinion the way to go ... "get it up and running", keeping it simple to use, demonstrating that is worth to invest more work.
Hope I find the time to test your work soon.
BR
HoWil

BTW.: Only to get some insight....Is there a special reason why there is a extra workbench for CFD rather then including it into FEM? I think Bernd invested much work in splitting FEM wb stuff to simplify the integration of new solvers
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Re: Fork of CFD workbench

Post by saso »

Awesome! :)

Would an indoor / outdoor building airflow simulation and results visualization (vector) like shown in the following two videos be already possible (ignore the node based workflow of course)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0auA5exoL9M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYuESbOVyp4

And I wonder if it is also already useful for structural wind load simulation... bernd ? :roll:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmsFC0mNayM

PS: yes I think it is probably preferred to have it as an extra WB, but it should be added to the Addon manager :)
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Re: Fork of CFD workbench

Post by bernd »

hi oliver

do you have in mind, there might be people who would like to install both, yours and the one of xia. You might use a different name and thus a different folder name.

bernd

great to see so much development in this regard!
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Re: Fork of CFD workbench

Post by johan »

We really hope the community would find this useful.

@HoWil. The CFD WB makes heavily use of the FEM functionality, but Bernd suggested a while back to Qingfeng that it might make sense to start a new WB. From our perspective, we want to keep the link as close as possible and ensure there are not duplicating code, but seeing that we aim this fork at the beginner we want to keep it clean and simple. We do foresee some differences between the two in the future that might make sense to have to seperate capabilties. For example, for practical CFD work we need to look at some other meshing strategies. We love GMSH, but we often need to generate large meshes (> 1 M cells) for flow analysis and we think it would make sense to move to cut-cell Cartesian meshes (snappyHexMesh and/or cfMesh). Qingfeng are, however, are interested in FSI and has said that he would like to see an integrated capability. Luckily FreeCAD allow us to do both, the beauty of open source! :D

@Saso. I, unfortunately, struggled to follow the videos, but in principle the inviscid analysis should be able to provide you with a reasonable first-order estimate of the flow. In the case of blunt bodies such as buildings, unlike airfoils, the drag is dominated by the pressure forces and is less sensitive to viscous drag effects. You would likely get fairly good results if you are interested in the loading, but I am not sure how accurate you would be able to resolve the wake and the flow downwind. We are planning to finish the viscous extension mid 2017, if you are willing to wait.

@Bernd. Thanks for the suggestion. We thought it might be a good idea to use a different name, but we were not sure what to use! :? Do you have good ideas?
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Re: Fork of CFD workbench

Post by sgrogan »

johan wrote:We thought it might be a good idea to use a different name, but we were not sure what to use! :? Do you have good ideas?
openSimCFD?
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Re: Fork of CFD workbench

Post by sgrogan »

saso wrote:PS: yes I think it is probably preferred to have it as an extra WB, but it should be added to the Addon manager :)
+1 and the name change would facilitate this.
Some additional work would be needed on windows though. The windows build linked above handles the dependencies :D
I see some stuff in bin/Scripts and bin/Libe/site-packages.
Are the Gnuplot, Paraview, OpenFoam executables required to be on the users system.
I will answer some of these questions myself, but I look at the packaging before testing the functionality.
Great job and thanks for this :)
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sgrogan
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Re: Fork of CFD workbench

Post by sgrogan »

What is the empty sub-directory in bin ".;"?
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Re: Fork of CFD workbench

Post by johan »

sgrogan wrote:
saso wrote:PS: yes I think it is probably preferred to have it as an extra WB, but it should be added to the Addon manager :)
+1 and the name change would facilitate this.
Some additional work would be needed on windows though. The windows build linked above handles the dependencies :D
I see some stuff in bin/Scripts and bin/Libe/site-packages.
Are the Gnuplot, Paraview, OpenFoam executables required to be on the users system.
I will answer some of these questions myself, but I look at the packaging before testing the functionality.
Great job and thanks for this :)
Gnuplot, Paraview and OpenFOAM is included in the blueCFD binary of OpenFOAM (please see the readme). We did not want to include/package it because it is really large (+700 MB). We thought it might be best if the user download it directly and install it?!
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