OpenFOAM release notes for version 1.5

OpenFOAM-1.5 is is a significant upgrade to version 1.4 in ways which are outlined below. This release passes all our standard tests and the tutorials have been broadly checked. If there are any bugs, please report them using the instructions set out in: http://www.openfoam.org/bugs.html.

Most of the developments for this release are in: new applications, e.g. for multiphase flow and cavitation, buoyancy-flow and heat transfer, high speed flows and even molecular dynamics; new utilities, e.g. for meshing and case monitoring; and, new modelling, e.g. in Lagrangian particle tracking, radiation and rotating frames of reference. With these new applications come numerous new example cases.

The 64bit binary packs of the OpenFOAM release were compiled on a machine running SuSE GNU/Linux version 10.3 and the 32bit on a machine running Ubuntu GNU/Linux version 7.1 and also tested on Ubuntu 8.04. We recommend that users run OpenFOAM on one of these or a similar recent version of GNU/Linux. This release has also been successfully compiled and tested on older GNU/Linux releases but this requires the installation of Qt 4.3.? for ParaView-3 to run.

• Released compiled with GCC 4.3.1, the latest version.
• Built in support for the Intel C++ 10.? compiler (untested).
• The choice of the compiler is controlled by the setting of the $WM_COMPILER and $WM_COMPILER_ARCH environment variables in the OpenFOAM-1.5/etc/bashrc (or cshrc) file.
• The location of the installation of the compiler is controlled by the $WM_COMPILER_INST environment variable in the OpenFOAM-1.5/etc/settings.sh (or settings.csh) file.

• New rhoCentralFoam solver for high-speed, viscous, compressible flows using non-oscillatory, central-upwind schemes.
• New interDyMFoam solver for 2 incompressible, isothermal, immiscible fluids using a VoF phase-fraction based interface capturing approach, with optional mesh motion and mesh topology changes including adaptive mesh (un)refinement. Useful for simulations such as tank filling, sloshing --- using solid body motion e.g. SDA or SKA (6DoF) — and slamming (using the mesh motion solver) and other large-scale applications that benefit from the efficiency gain of adaptive mesh (un)refinement of the interface.
• New compressibleInterFoam solver for 2 compressible, isothermal, immiscible fluids using a volume of fluid (VoF) phase-fraction approach for interface-capturing. The momentum and other fluid properties are of the "mixture" and a single momentum equation is solved. Turbulence is modelled using a run-time selectable incompressible LES model.
• New interPhaseChangeFoam solver for 2 incompressible, isothermal, immiscible fluids with phase-change, e.g. cavitation. Uses VoF interface capturing, with momentum and other fluid properties described for the ``mixture'' and a single momentum equation is solved. The set of phase-change models provided are designed to simulate cavitation but other mechanisms of phase-change are supported within this solver framework.
• New rasCavitatingFoam solver for transient cavitation using a barotropic compressibility model, with RAS turbulence.
• New lesCavitatingFoam solver for transient cavitation using a barotropic compressibility model, with LES turbulence.
• New chtMultiRegionFoam solver that couples conjugate heat transfer in a solid to a buoyancy-driven flow simulation.
• New PDRFoam solver for compressible premixed/partially-premixed turbulent combustion that includes porosity/distributed resistance (PDR) modelling to handle regions containing solid blockages which cannot be resolved by the mesh. Requires the PDR fields.
• New lesBuoyantFoam solver for transient, buoyant, turbulent flow of compressible fluids for ventilation and heat-transfer. Turbulence is modelled using a run-time selectable compressible LES model.
• New rhoPimpleFoam solver for transient, turbulent flow of compressible fluids for ventilation and heat-transfer. Uses the flexible PIMPLE (PISO-SIMPLE) solution for time-resolved and pseudo-transient simulations.
• New buoyantSimpleRadiationFoam solver for steady-state, buoyant, turbulent flow of compressible fluids with radiation, for ventilation and heat-transfer.
• New rhoTurbTwinParcelFoam solver for transient for compressible, turbulent flow with two thermo-clouds.
• New gnemdFOAM solver for general purpose molecular dynamics that simulates atoms in arbitrary shaped domains and average atomic/molecular quantities to the mesh to create field data.
• New mdEqulibrationFoam solver to equilibrates and/or preconditions molecular dynamics systems.
• Demonstration SRFSimpleFoam solver based on simpleFoam that incorporates the SRF extensions (see below) for rotating flows.

New snappyHexMesh utility that generates split-hex meshes automatically from triangulated (STL) surface geometries. The mesh approximately conforms to the surface by iteratively refining a starting mesh and morphing the resulting split-hex mesh to the surface. An optional phase will shrink back the resulting mesh and insert cell layers. It has a flexible specification of mesh refinement level and robust surface handling with a pre-specified final mesh quality. It runs in parallel with a load balancing step every iteration.

• New extrude2DMesh utility that extrudes 2D meshes into a 3D mesh. 2D meshes are described by faces with 2 points, so can be used in combination with 2D meshes converted with ccm26ToFoam.
• New couplePatches functionality integrated into createPatch, which optionally synchronises ("couples") points and faces of coupled (cyclic, processor) patches.
• New applyBoundaryLayer pre-processing utility to apply 1/7th power-law boundary layers at walls, starting from uniform or potential flow solutions.
• New execFlowFunctionObjects utility executes functionObjects as a post-processing activity, e.g. probes, sampling, force calculation.
• New changeDictionary utility makes batch changes to OpenFOAM input files, e.g. to change boundary conditions of field files.
• New foamCalc utility, a generic post-processing field calculator tool
• New molConfig pre-processing utility for molecular dynamics cases. Fills zones of a mesh with single crystal lattices of specified structure, density, orientation, alignment and temperature.
• Extended splitMeshRegions utility to split multi-zone meshes, e.g. defined through cellZones, into separate meshes.
• Extended the foamToVTK, decomposePar, reconstructPar and mapFields utilities to include support for multiple particle clouds in parallel processing.

• Rewritten OpenFOAM Reader Module for version 3, a major redesign of ParaView.
• New features include viewing patch names, reading of Lagrangian data, handling of cell, face and point sets, multiple views.

• Overhauled the lagrangian library to support multiple clouds.
• New lagrangianIntermediate library incorporating a hierarchy of parcel and cloud types, accommodating kinematic, thermodynamic and reacting applications, including coupling to the new radiation library. Sub-models are added at the relevant level of physics, e.g.:
  • kinematic: injection, wall interaction, drag, dispersion;
  • thermo: heat transfer;
  • reacting: reacting composition, mass transfer, surface reactions.
• New single rotating frame of reference (SRF) library for rotating flow applications, e.g. turbo-machinery.
• New radiation library including the P1 model and associated Marshak boundary conditions for incident radiation.
• New displacementInterpolation motion solver for flexible mesh scaling.
• New molecularDynamics Lagrangian library to calculate intermolecular forces between spherically symmetrical monatomic species in arbitrary geometries.

To aid common monitoring and post-processing activities.

• forces: calculate the force and moment on a patch or set of patches, e.g. to calculate the lift, drag and moment of an object in the flow.
• forceCoeffs: calculate the normalised force and moment on a patch or set of patches, e.g. to calculate the lift, drag and moment coefficients of an object in the flow.
• fieldAverage: calculate field arithmetic mean and prime-squared averages for a list of fields.
• foamCalcFunctions: calculate field components, div, mag, magGrad or magSqr.

• Generalised jumpCyclic type: cyclic condition with an additional prescribed jump in value.
• fan type: specialisation of jumpCyclic, applying a prescribed jump in pressure to simulate a fan within a mesh.
• Generalised advective outflow boundary condition based on solving D/Dt(psi, U) = 0 at the boundary.
• Additional turbulent flow inlet to specify mixing length and frequency.
• Generalisation of time varying set of boundary conditions.

• New argument-free command execution, e.g typing "icoFoam" without root and case directory arguments.
• Extended time command line options.
• Many enhancements to dictionary including macro substitution, optional merging and default/overwrite behaviour, enhanced "#include" file handling and the framework to support function evaluation.
• Cross-links between applications and Doxygen documentation with the "-doc" argument.
• Non-blocking, non-buffered, parallel transfers with potential scaling benefits for larger number of processors.