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Version 5.0 - Cambridge

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Overview

The foam-extend project is a fork of the OpenFOAM® open source library for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). It is an open project welcoming and integrating contributions from all users and developers. Previously known as OpenFOAM-dev and OpenFOAM-extend, it contains bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as extensions and additional features provided by community contributors (see file ListOfContributors). For a full list, see below and previous release notes at: http://sourceforge.net/p/foam-extend/wiki/Home/

Version 5.0, nicknamed “Cambridge”, is the current version of foam-extend. The release continues the tradition and spirit of the original FOAM code developed by prof. Jasak and Mr. Weller during their time at Imperial College and released as the general purpose CFD/CCM package by Nabla Ltd. in 2000. In this spirit, we reverted 18 December 2013 to the original numbering scheme (foam-2.3.2, 13 December 2004) as release number 3.0. Visit http://foam-extend.org for more information.

OPENFOAM is a registered trademark of ESI Group. OpenFOAM-extend and foam-extend are a community effort not endorsed by ESI Group.

This is a major release of foam-extend-5.0 created from the nextRelease branch of foam-extend-4.1 which consolidates cumulative development since 14 October 2019.

Installation

foam-extend-5.0 can be compiled and runs on a large variety of Linux, Mac or Windows systems

  • Main supported OSs:
    • Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
    • Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
    • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
    • Mac OS X
    • Microsoft Windows 10
  • Compile from source:

    Please refer to doc/buildInstructions/ for details. Further installation instruction are available on the unofficial OpenFOAM Wiki: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Installation/Linux/foam-extend-4.1 If you have improvements or build instructions for a new system, please share them with the community (see section “How to contribute”, below).

  • Download binary packages:

    Binary packages are available for download at http://sourceforge.net/projects/foam-extend/ for the following systems: Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 18.04 and Windows 10

  • Accompanying ThirdParty software:
    • gcc compatibility up to 11.2
    • bison 3.8.2
    • cmake 3.22.1
    • flex-2.6.4
    • hwloc 2.0.1
    • libccmio 2.6.1
    • mesquite 2.3.0
    • metis 5.1.0
    • openmpi 4.1.2
    • parmetis 4.0.3
    • ParMGridGen 1.0
    • PyFoam 0.6.4
    • scotch 6.0.9
    • pyFoam 0.6.9
  • The code has been developed on Ubuntu-20.04. It is natively compiled on Linux, Mac OSX and Microsoft Windows 10.

Compatibility

Upstream features from the OpenFOAM® code base are merged into foam-extend on regular basis. The interface format of foam-extend-5.0 is largely compatible to foam-extend-4.1, to OpenFOAM-1.6-ext and OpenFOAM-1.7.x. In some cases, the differences are caused by bug fixes and algorithmic improvements, considered more important than inter-operability.

Main differentiators between foam-extend and OpenFOAM

A large number of features have been lost within the release of OpenFOAM since version 1.3, the code base has shrunk by more than 40%. While we understand the lack of technical ability of supporting advanced CFD features, we feel that existing features and specifically large-scale contributions should remain active and developed further. Below is a list of main features of foam-extend which are lacking, lost, deactivated or unusable in ESI releases:

  • Turbomachinery features, including General Grid Interface (GGI), partial overlap GGI, cyclic GGI, with improvements in parallel scaling. First release of a mixing plane stage interface
  • Dynamic mesh with topological changes Sliding interfaces, mesh layering, attach-detach boundaries etc. In foam-extend, full parallel support for topological changes is released for the first time
  • Finite Element Method with support for polyhedral meshes This is mainly used in mesh deformation and over the last 15 years it has proven vastly superior to all other dynamic mesh methods.
  • Advanced mesh deformation technology Including tet FEM mesh deformation, Radial Basis Function (RBF) mesh deformation, tetrahedral remeshing dynamic mesh support and solid body motion functions. All of the above include parallelisation support
  • Library of dynamic meshes with topological changes with full second order FVM discretisation support on moving meshes with topological changes
  • Internal combustion engine-specific dynamic mesh classes such as two-stroke engine and various forms of 4-stroke and multi-valve dynamic mesh classes
  • Finite Area Method providing support for FVM-like discretisation on a curved surface in 3-D, with examples of liquid film modeling
  • Block-coupled matrix support, allowing fully implicit multi-equation solution of NxN equation sets, with full parallelisation support. First release of a block-AMG linear equation solver
  • Fully implicit conjugate-coupled solution framework, allowing implicit solution for multiple equations over multiple meshes, with parallelism
  • Proper Orthogonal Decomposition data analysis tools, with applications to FOAM field classes
  • Equation reader classes and tutorials
  • Multi-solver solution framework, allowing multiple field models to be solved in a coupled manner
  • A major contribution is solid mechanics modelling, including linear and non-linear materials, contact, self-contact and friction, with updated Lagrangian or absolute Lagrangian formulation. Solution of damage models and crack propagation in complex materials via topological changes
  • CUDA solver release, provided in full source and as an example of coupling external linear equation solvers with FOAM
  • Library-level support for Immersed Boundary Method and Overset Mesh
  • Framework for Reduced Order Models using Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) for real-time simulations based on the method of snapshots
  • Major improvements in accuracy and stability of FVM discretisation with options on convection and diffusion discretisation, deferred correction or explicit schemes
  • Algebraic multigrid solver framework for scalar and block matrices
  • 274 tutorials with automated run scripts
  • Automatic test harness
  • Approximately 6800 bug fixes in fundamental level libraries and discretisation techniques

New features in foam-extend-5.0, since foam-extend-4.1

The list of features is a result of the work of numerous contributors. The maintainers of foam-extend would formally like to thank them all.

Get a full log of the updates by (either):

user@machine> git log 5.0.. > commitLog
user@machine> git log 5.0.. --oneline > commitLog
user@machine> gitg 5.0..

Major new features:

  • Physics modelling
  • Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) model development across a number of applications with tutorials and validation cases. POD uses the Method of Snapshots to create energy-consistent reduced order models which run 1000s of times faster than full CFD. POD analysis is also used to examine stability characteristics of flow regimes or to assemble “digital twin”-type models. POD has been deployed across a number of applications, with new tutorials.
  • Extension to porous zone models for thermal modelling and heat transfer, including implicit coupled conjugate heat transfer
  • Physics modelling updates for coal combustion
  • Handling of derived forms of enthalpy in thermophysical models with correct boundary condition setup (coupled interfaces)
  • Numerics
  • Immersed Boundary (Surface) method: major improvements. Consistency errors in parallel cutting and interaction with coupled boundaries have been resolved. Further type-consistent boundary conditions on IB surfaces have been adeed, with correct mapping and post-processing. Major robustness improvements in the method. Algorithmic improvements in immersed boundary handling; cutting, dead cells, extended sets of boundary conditions. Rewrite of cut cell handling, parallelism and consistency updates.
  • Immersed boundary with interfering patches: multiple intersections
  • Updated algorithms for buoyant flows: correct limit of incompressibility and consistent handling of stratified flows. Solvers represent incompressible results for canonical flows without instability
  • Consistency updates for Multiple Rotating Frames (MRF) of reference, with accurate geometry handling. Consistent and convergent integration with block pressure-velocity solvers
  • Algorithmic updates for steady compressible turbomachinery flows. New implementation of rothalpy handling with better consistency in rothalpy jump coupled boundary conditions
  • Use of block-AMG solvers for block-coupled p-U solvers: see tutorials
  • Updated handling of bounded flux boundary conditions
  • New 01 bounded convection schemes
  • Better reporting of flux check
  • Updated algorithms for partial overlap GGI interface pairs
  • Change in handling of adjustPhi for moving deforming meshes
  • HPC and parallelism, performance improvements
  • Major improvement in handling of processor boundaries and other cached coupled interface patch types. This resolves long-standing bugs in FOAM-OpenFOAM development lines and results in significant reduction in number of iterations of linear solvers. Further, numerous stability and consistency problems in parallel execution have been resolved
  • Improvements for large memory usage in large-scale HPC cases
  • Incremental consistency work on block-coupled solvers for incompressible flows
  • Incremental improvement in performance for parallel Oveset Mesh capability. Update in low-level communication and consistency
  • Clean-up of boundary condition updates in absence of database field access
  • Dynamic Mesh
  • Full deployment of dynamic load balancing with AMR or other dynamic mesh features at the level of topoChangerDynamicFvMesh
  • Refactoring of dynamic mesh solvers with algoritmic efficiency improvements
  • Changes in dynamic mesh handling: efficient and consistent geometry updates

Software engineering

  • Port to gcc-9 and gcc-11
  • c++-11 updates: default destructors, delete automatically generated
  • update of the build system using native third party packages whenever possible
  • Change in style to FatalErrorInFunction sytnax
  • new VectorN types for extended coupling in block matrices

Consistency with previous version

  • fvSolution requires correct PIMPLE/SIMPLE sub-dictionaries; use of potentialFlow sub-dictionary in initialisation
  • blockMeshDict moved into system
  • faceCompactList consistency with OpenCFD version

Overview of Development

  • New tutorials: 274 in total
  • Bug fixes: see git log for details
  • In total, the release consists of 5535 commits since the last release

Reporting bugs

To report bugs, please use the bugtracker at http://sourceforge.net/p/foam-extend/tickets/

How to contribute

All your contributions are highly welcome: New solvers, utilities and models; bug fixes; documentation. The many ways of contributing and the contribution process are described in detail at: http://sourceforge.net/p/foam-extend/wiki/HowToContribute/

List of Contributors:

See file ListOfContributors