Virtual Marine Arsenal

The OpenFOAM (Open Field Operation and Manipulation) CFD Toolbox is a free, open source CFD software package which has a large user base across most areas of engineering and science, from both commercial and academic organisations.

OpenFOAM has an extensive range of features to solve anything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions, turbulence and heat transfer, to solid dynamics and electromagnetics.

It includes tools for meshing, notably snappyHexMesh, a parallelised mesher for complex CAD geometries, and for pre- and post-processing. Almost everything (including meshing, and pre- and post-processing) runs in parallel as standard, enabling users to take full advantage of computer hardware at their disposal.

OpenFOAM offers users complete freedom to customise and extend its existing functionality, either by themselves or by others. It follows a highly modular code design in which collections of functionality (e.g. numerical methods, meshing, physical models, …) are each compiled into their own shared library.

Image.1) Calculated friction coefficients on 6:1 prolate spheroid test case with OpenFOAM.

Executable applications are then created that are simply linked to the library functionality. OpenFOAM includes over 80 solver applications that simulate specific problems in engineering mechanics and over 170 utility applications that perform pre- and post-processing tasks, e.g. meshing, data visualisation, etc.