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19th December 2011

OpenFOAM 2.1.0: Run-time Control

Timing of data writes

Version 2.1.0 includes some new controls for timing the writing of results to file.

Secondary controls in controlDict

In addition to the standard writeControl and writeInterval settings, optional secondary write controls are now available in the controlDict file through the secondaryWriteControl and secondaryWriteInterval keywords. For example, for an extra dump of results every hour of cpu time, e.g. in case of case termination, the user can add the following entries.

secondaryWriteControl    cpuTime;
secondaryWriteInterval   3600;

Sending a signal to a process

The option of writing data based on sending a signal to a process is controlled by two entries in the global controlDict file, i.e. in the $WM_PROJECT_DIR/etc directory. If any of these entries is set to a positive integer, the integer is interpreted as the signal to intercept and force a write of results at the next timestep. In the case of the stopAtWriteNowSignal, the solver will also terminate. Signals can be sent to the process with the kill command, e.g. kill -10 <PID>, where <PID> is the process ID.

OptimisationSwitches
{
    ...
    // Force dumping (at next timestep) upon signal
    writeNowSignal              10;
    // Force dumping (at next timestep) and clean exit upon signal
    stopAtWriteNowSignal        20; //-1;
}

Function objects

The following changes/additions have been made to function objects.

  • Users can now supply a start time to activate the function object.
  • A coefficient of variance calculation has been added to fieldValues function object.
  • A new window option has been added to fieldAverage to sample over a fixed time interval.
  • A new fieldCoordinateSystemTransform function object can transform fields from global co-ordinate system into a local co-ordinate system.
  • Users can now specify the interpolation method for the streamLine function object.
  • A new particleErosion cloud function object is available that outputs a volume field to describe the volume of material eroded by particle/patch interactions.

Run-time code compilation

A shortcut for the #codeStream syntax has been introduced to perform one line calculations. The shortcut uses the #calc directive, e.g. to do an algebraic operation between two scalars, a and b, the syntax is:

a 1.0;      // force a to be a scalar
b 3;
c #calc "$a/$b";