r/OpenFOAM

I am a MEng fresher with a passion for aerodynamics and fluid behavior. My interest in this field began with self study in high school and has grown into a focused career goal in Computational Fluid Dynamics.

I have already begun building my foundation by completing an aerodynamics study in OpenFOAM, specifically a square cylinder flow analysis at Re 100, 200, and 300, where I successfully achieved mesh independence. Additionally, I serve as an Aerodynamics and Chassis Engineer for my university's Formula SAE team, where I am currently learning ANSYS.

While I am dedicated to learning, I am finding the sheer volume of online resources overwhelming. To ensure I build a rigorous foundation, I would value your perspective on the following:* Learning Structure: How would you recommend a "fresher" structure their learning to transition from basic simulations to advanced CFD proficiency?

Project Selection: What types of projects should I prioritize to build a strong professional portfolio, and how should I approach them to demonstrate true technical depth?

Al Integration: Where do you see the most significant scope for Artificial Intelligence within the CFD workflow?

Skills & Pitfalls: Beyond software proficiency, what relevant skills are most critical for a CFD engineer today, and what common learning mistakes should I avoid?

Even a small piece of advice from your experience could be a major turning point for my career

How the fuck do i open files in paraview from OPENFOAM? can anyone help? I have no idea how to use this thing

Please, ai’m begging you. Someone help me!
I’m simulating a pantograph of a train in openfoam and I’m trying to create the mesh with snappy, but it’s unusable. I’ve simplified the geometry like a madman, I’ve erased everything non essential, but I still have a skewness of like 8/9 and I can’t lower it…
The thing that drives me crazy is that sometimes rotating the geometry of 180 deg lowers the skewness to 4.5… but sometimes it doesn’t. Since I need to analyse it for numerous angles of sideslip I can’t understand the behaviour of snappy and it’s driving me crazy… can someone help me?
I’ve used salire to export stl surfaces of very high quality, with all triangles of same dimensions and almost equilateral traingles, but it didn’t change anything… increasing the sano iterations by 8 times didn’t help either.. what can I do?

Hey all, just wondering if someone could take some time to give me some assistance.
I'm new to OpenFoam and have been playing with tutorials and changing parts of them to see if i can do them without the full structure of the "tutorial".

I am using blockMesh, topoSet then refineMesh(a few iteration of the two), for my background mesh, works fine.

Extrude Mesh to make it 2D.

Translate (to recentre in Z axis)

snappyHexMesh for my STL geometry.

Extrude Mesh again because a tutorial did this. not sure what this does, my guess is makes it more uniform if the snappyHexMesh is being funky? i dont think its 100% 2D because extruding it by 1 only acts on the base cell? and snappy divides in in the z direction but i guess its close enough to be acting like it. its only cell number I'm trying to lower and isnt that important.

And i recentre it again in Z axis.

When i look at the mesh its as i expect and im not looking for it to be perfect as its more the functionality im trying to learn.

After my meshing it gives me folders 0,1,2,3. timesteps as my mesh gets iterated(dont fully understand this because i have "-overwrite" on my snappy and thought that just gives a singular final mesh?). the 0 folder overwrites the initial conditions folder. this is where my understanding goes out the window..

I decomposePar and copy my 0.orig folder and rename it "0" into all the processor* folders.

mpirun -np 8 simpleFoam -parallel
but it fails because it cant find 0/p

Could someone give some insight to the logic im obviously lacking. i will no doubt have follow up questions so be ready

Hi all.

I am solving heat transfer problem in OpenFOAM v13. Not exactly the right tool to use, but I can only use open source software, so I am using it.

My problem involves air speeds of 12 m/s*s (max) and initial temperature difference of 100K between the inlet and walls inside the domain. the air flow will be the main tool for decreasing the temperature of the walls by striking it.

Having read the background on solvers in OpenFOAM, there are no solvers for incompressible, heat transfer flows.

My question: I need to calculate the temperature of the walls inside the domain at the end of the simulation. so, which solver to use? I know I cannot use simpleFoam or incompressibleFluid. I used fluid solver and the results are constantly diverging. So, which solver to use?

If not a specific solver, can I use layered solver, like simpleFoam combined with thermal solver? is yes, how?

Thank you.

Hi everyone,

I am struggling with a persistent Segmentation Fault (signal 11) while running a custom solver (based on chtMultiRegionFoam + sprayFoam) in parallel on OpenFOAM v2312. The simulation involves a fluid region and three solid regions (bDisc, pad1, pad2).

The solver crashes immediately at the first time step when it starts solving the solid region bDisc. I have already tried disabling the spray cloud, but the error persists, which leads me to believe the issue is related to the coupled heat transfer at the interfaces.

The stack trace points to a crash in patchFaceMixture and turbulentTemperatureRadCoupledMixedFvPatchScalarField::deltaH():

#3  Foam::multiComponentMixture<...>::patchFaceMixture(int, int) const
#4  Foam::heThermo<...>::he(...) const
#5  Foam::compressible::turbulentTemperatureRadCoupledMixedFvPatchScalarField::deltaH() const

What I've configured:

• Version: OpenFOAM v2312.
• Decomposition: scotch method with 3 processors.
• Regions: 1 Fluid, 3 Solids.
• Boundary Conditions: Using turbulentTemperatureRadCoupledMixed for the thermal coupling.

Questions:

1. Has anyone encountered Segfaults specifically in patchFaceMixture during parallel CHT runs?
2. Could this be related to how scotch decomposes the coupled patches across processors?

p/s: I have provided the log.decomposePar and log.run files in the comments below.

Hello. This is a discussion post. It would be good if I get to hear multiple views, from personal experiences.

There are multiple stages before pressing the "start simulation button". CAD modelling, meshing, identifying the IC and BC, identifying the solver model among others.

So, i would like to know from the community here, how AI is being used? Even better, where is AI being introduced and why?

I am asking this, because I feel that AI will not increase the speed of the entire simulation process, apart from executing or monitoring the iterations.