OpenFOAM is leading software for computational fluid dynamics (CFD), written in C++ (1.5 million lines), licensed free and open source, with a user base spanning industry, government research and academia worldwide.

CFD software is used primarily for: research into new technologies; design and optimisation of products; safety calculations; and, problem troubleshooting. It calculates fluid motion and forces, heat transfer, thermodynamics and chemistry in fluids and solids — as an alternative to experiments and with greater detail and accuracy than approximate calculation methods.

The OpenFOAM Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation that distributes OpenFOAM exclusively free and open source under the General Public Licence (GPL) v3. The Foundation owns the copyright of the code it distributes, making other versions of OpenFOAM “modified source versions” under the GPL.

OpenFOAM offers an alternative to proprietary CFD software which command licence fees comparable to the payroll cost of each CFD engineer, effectively doubling the direct expenses associated with CFD. OpenFOAM enables faster innovation through the freedom to customise the source code, automate calculations and collaborate with partners. It does not carry the risks of vendor lock-in and of outgrowing a restricted proprietary platform.

OpenFOAM is used across a broad spectrum of engineering including: chemical / process engineering; civil engineering, e.g. built environment, and environmental, wind, ocean, and water resources engineering; mechanical engineering, e.g. manufacturing, power generation (including wind and nuclear), and automotive, marine and aerospace engineering; and, other engineering, e.g. agricultural and mining.

CFD is used routinely in the development of new technologies to achieve Net Zero, since they involve fluid dynamics, heat, etc. OpenFOAM is being rapidly adopted for research and development of technologies in renewable energy, energy storage, alternative fuels, batteries, mining metals, energy efficiency, carbon capture, pollution and waste management, food production, human comfort, water supply and management, and weather and climate modelling.

CFD Direct develops and maintains OpenFOAM, transferring the copyright in all its code under to The OpenFOAM Foundation under a Contributor Agreement to make its job of enforcing the GPL easier. It includes OpenFOAM’s creator Henry Weller, OpenFOAM co-founder Chris Greenshields, core developer Will Bainbridge. Henry and Chris are also founders and Directors of The OpenFOAM Foundation.

Like all successful open source software, OpenFOAM must have a consistent core team to maintain the robustness, usability and extensibility upon which its thousands of user depend. It needs a particularly clear strategy and domain expertise to manage the high level of complexity associated with scientific software. CFD Direct provides the team, strategy and expertise.

While projects that use OpenFOAM receive substantial public funding, e.g. from academic research councils, there is never any direct public funding for OpenFOAM’s maintenance and development. Instead, The Foundation runs annual funding campaigns to support the maintenance of OpenFOAM.

There is understandable confusion between “OpenFOAM” distributed from The OpenFOAM Foundation at this website, and modified distributions with the same name from elsewhere. The distributions are distinguishable by version numbering, with The Foundation using an incremental number, currently OpenFOAM v13. OpenFOAM from The Foundation is the best distribution because CFD Direct takes the initiative to redesign large components of OpenFOAM to improve usability, robustness and extensibility.

OpenFOAM is native to the Linux operating system (OS) by running applications from a terminal. It is packaged for Ubuntu Linux for simple installation. Packages include the version number in their name, e.g. “openfoam13”, do not use the native package named “openfoam”.

OpenFOAM runs on Microsoft Windows using the Windows Subsystem for Linux. It also runs on macOS using Canonical Multipass. In both cases, they use Ubuntu Linux as the host OS so that OpenFOAM is simply installed using the packages for Ubuntu.