Function Objects OpenFOAM can carry out post-processing automatically while the simulation is running using function objects. In v2.3.0, a distinction is made between when a function object evaluates, and when it writes to file. The respective behaviour is controlled using the new evaluateControl and existing outputControl keyword settings. The specification […]

Mesh Decomposition and Reconstruction The following improvements have been made to mesh decomposition and reconstruction utilities: reconstructPar, reconstructParMesh and decomposePar now decompose, reconstruct all cell sets, face sets and point sets; this behaviour can be disabled by executing with the -noSets command line option. The decomposeParDict file contains some optional […]

Polynomial Surface Normal Gradient The surface normal gradient calculation, snGrad, is integral to pressure-velocity algorithms on unstructured meshes and the choice of method has an important impact on both accuracy and stability. 2nd-order accuracy on arbitrary unstructured meshes cannot be achieved using an snGrad calculated on a face only from […]

Particle Tracking In previous versions of OpenFOAM, patch injection models would inject new parcels at locations between the centres of the boundary face and near-wall cells, leading to a parcel distribution with an ordered structure which would persist for some time unless dispersion was applied. In v2.3.0, particles injected at […]

Thermal Baffles OpenFOAM can emulate heat transfer across thin solid structures, or “baffles”. Baffles are represented as boundary patches of the mesh and heat transfer is handled either in 3D by the thermalBaffle boundary condition or the equivalent 1D approximation called thermalBaffle1D, described previously. In v2.3.0, the use of thermal […]

Mesh Morphing In previous versions, rigid body motion simulations use one of the generic motion solvers, e.g. displacementSBRStress that solves an elliptic equation for the displacement. These motion solvers suffer from a tendency of cells to shear, and despite various attempts to stiffen cells against shearing particularly near rotating boundaries, mesh […]

Dense Particle Flows OpenFOAM includes the DPMFoam solver which includes the effect of the particulate volume fraction on the continuous phase, suitable for dense particle flow simulation. The solver uses existing functionality for particle clouds and their collisions, which directly resolves particle-particle interactions. Source code DPMFoam solver$FOAM_SOLVERS/lagrangian/DPMFoam Example Goldschmidt experimental […]

Predictor-Corrector Semi-Implicit MULES The success of the volume of fluid (VoF) solvers for multiphase flow in OpenFOAM is underpinned by the development of the multi-dimensionsal limiter for explicit solution (MULES) as a very effective method of guaranteeing boundedness of scalar fields, in particular phase/mass-fractions. MULES was introduced in version 1.4 […]

Field Mapping The mapFields utility has been re-written to enable parallel operation and a mapping mode has been introduced which can be specified using the -mapMethod command line option. The mapping mode can be: direct: the meshes are assumed to be of identical topology, with one-to-one correspondence between cells, but […]

Non-Conforming AMI Patches The arbitrary mesh interface (AMI) was introduced in OpenFOAM v2.1.0 to enable simulation across disconnected, adjacent, mesh domains. It is particularly useful for rotating geometries. Those cases require separate meshes for rotating and/or static regions of geometry, which are coupled at patch boundaries through the cyclicAMI boundary […]