OpenFOAM Basic ★ 0.000

This course introduces the fundamentals of numerical modeling using the open-source software package OpenFOAM. The course is developed within a problem-oriented approach: you will explore various modeling capabilities in OpenFOAM by solving two classic fluid mechanics problems. The goal of this course is to provide foundational knowledge and practical skills in using OpenFOAM, essential for further work with more complex engineering models.

This course is beneficial for undergraduate and graduate students studying numerical modeling of hydrodynamic processes, CFD specialists and engineers transitioning to OpenFOAM from other CFD packages, as well as professionals from related fields seeking to master modern methods of computational fluid dynamics.

Successful completion of the course requires a basic understanding of fluid dynamics and fundamental knowledge of numerical modeling methods.

The course is designed using a problem-oriented approach. You will explore various modeling capabilities in OpenFOAM while working through two classic problems in fluid mechanics.

You will begin by learning the basic features of OpenFOAM through the study of fluid flow in a square cavity. The solutions to this benchmark problem contain the most important structural elements of viscous flows, such as shear flow, wall-bound growing boundary layers, and primary, attached, and secondary vortices. As the Reynolds number increases, the multiscale nature and complexity of these structures impose increasingly strict demands on the quality of the numerical schemes and the resolution of the computational grids. For this reason, the steady lid-driven cavity flow is a classic test case for validating new methods for solving the Navier–Stokes equations and for evaluating software packages. A basic configuration for solving this problem (a ready-to-use case) is provided by the OpenFOAM developers. Using this example, you will become familiar with the general structure of an OpenFOAM case, basic mesh generation techniques, core solver settings, as well as tools and methods for post-processing and visualizing simulation results.

In the second problem, flow past a circular cylinder in a viscous incompressible fluid, you will develop an OpenFOAM model from scratch. The flow dynamics around a cylinder are more complex than those in a cavity. In addition to thin boundary layers and attached vortex structures near the body, an unsteady vortex wake forms behind the cylinder and extends far downstream. This imposes much stricter requirements on mesh topology, numerical accuracy, and computational efficiency. Throughout the modeling process, you will learn how to construct complex structured block meshes, evaluate mesh quality, deepen your understanding of numerical methods and algorithms for solving the problem using the finite volume approach, properly select discretization schemes and solution algorithms, and become familiar with parallelizing computations using domain decomposition and MPI.