OpenFOAM: Open source CFD in research and industry

The current focus of development in industrial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is integration of CFD into Computer-Aided product development, geometrical optimisation, robust design and similar. On the other hand, in CFD research aims to extend the boundaries of practical engineering use in “non-traditional” areas. Requirements of computational flexibility and code integration are contradictory: a change of coding paradigm, with object orientation, library components, equation mimicking is proposed as a way forward. This paper describes OpenFOAM, a C++ object oriented library for Computational Continuum Mechanics (CCM) developed by the author. Efficient and flexible implementation of complex physical models is achieved by mimicking the form of partial differential equation in software, with code functionality provided in library form. Open Source deployment and development model allows the user to achieve desired versatility in physical modeling without the sacrifice of complex geometry support and execution efficiency.