Open FOAM - Structure of OpenFOAM

Structure of OpenFOAM

OpenFOAM is constituted by a large base library, which offers the core capabilities of the code:

• Tensor and field operations
• Discretization of partial differential equations using a human-readable syntax
• Solution of linear systems
• Solution of ordinary differential equations
• Automatic parallelization of high-level operations
• Dynamic mesh
• General physical models
  • Rheological models
  • Thermodynamic models and database
  • Turbulence models
  • Chemical reaction and kinetics models
  • Lagrangian particle tracking methods
  • Radiative heat transfer models
  • Multi-reference frame and single-reference frame methodologies

The capabilities provided by the library are then used to develop applications. Applications are written using the high-level syntax introduced by OpenFOAM, which aims at reproducing the conventional mathematical notation. Two categories of applications exist:

• Solvers: they perform the actual calculation to solve a specific continuum mechanics problem
• Utilities: they are used to prepare the mesh, set-up the simulation case, process the results, and to perform operations other than solving the problem under examination

Each application provides specific capabilities: for example the application called blockMesh is used to generate meshes from an input file provided by the user, while another application called icoFoam solves the Navier-Stokes equations for an incompressible laminar flow.

Finally, a set of third-party packages are used to provide parallel functionality (i.e.OpenMPI) and graphical post-processing (ParaView).