The classic design loop in CFD goes like this: guess a shape, mesh it, simulate it, look at the result, tweak the geometry, repeat. It works when a design has three or four parameters. It stops working when the shape is described by dozens or hundreds of variables, because nobody Read more
“OpenFOAM” isn’t one piece of software with one release schedule — it’s a name shared by three actively developed, independently governed codebases that diverged from the same origin and have been evolving separately for over a decade. On cloudHPC we now provide foam-extend 5.0 alongside both the OpenFOAM Foundation release Read more
One of the greatest strengths of OpenFOAM is its open architecture. Whether you are developing a novel turbulence model, crafting a tailored boundary condition, or building a brand-new solver from scratch, OpenFOAM gives you total freedom to extend C++ classes to fit your research or industrial needs. However, moving custom Read more
The 21th OpenFOAM Workshop in Guimarães, Portugal was a fantastic gathering of open-source CFD minds. For my session, I wanted to step away from the abstract theory and focus on something highly practical: OpenFOAM Automation. Whether you are an absolute beginner or a seasoned simulation engineer, the message from the Read more
In high-fidelity engineering, traditional shape optimization can feel like a brute-force endeavor. If you are optimizing an aerodynamic component—like an automotive spoiler, a wind turbine blade, or a transonic aircraft wing—using the standard finite-difference approach, your computational cost scales linearly with every new design variable. Introduce 100 design parameters, and Read more
In a traditional HPC environment, launching an OpenFOAM simulation feels like a project in itself. You have to manage version sourcing, write manual decomposition scripts, and handle the tedious task of reconstructing parallel results. At cloudHPC.cloud, we’ve eliminated this overhead. When you run a simulation, our specialized OpenFOAM script takes Read more
In the world of fluid dynamics, few phenomena are as visually arresting—and engineeringly significant—as the Von Kármán Vortex Street. Whether it’s the swaying of a skyscraper, the “singing” of power lines, or the swirling patterns in clouds captured by satellites, this phenomenon is a masterclass in how fluids interact with Read more
In the world of OpenFOAM, generating a high-quality mesh is often 80% of the battle. While snappyHexMesh is incredibly powerful for snapping to complex geometries, getting those elusive, crisp boundary layers can feel like more of an art than a science. If your layers are collapsing or looking “jagged” around Read more
A technical deep dive into creating conformal solid-fluid interfaces using snappyHexMesh and SALOME. Introduction In the world of Computational Fluid Dynamics with OpenFOAM, moving from single-phase fluid flow to Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) is a significant step up in complexity. CHT involves the coupled simulation of heat transfer between a Read more
Modern Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) algorithms are capable of running transient analyses with advanced turbulence modeling, making them popular for designing turbomachinery. However, achieving a higher level of accuracy and running multiple analyses simultaneously for optimization requires a complete High-Performance Computing (HPC) system. The challenge is compounded by the continuous Read more