OpenCFD are pleased to announce the release of version 1.3 of their OpenFOAM open source CFD toolbox.

Version 1.3 contains numerous developments aimed towards improving the efficiency and robustness of OpenFOAM for large-scale engineering CFD, including:

- Improved parallel running
Parallel running of OpenFOAM has been improved significantly with: easy implementation of integral boundary conditions, e.g. fixed mass flow rate; faster performance of the parallelised AMG solver; faster parallel communications.
- Increased speed
Significant improvements in speed and memory storage through careful code optimisation.
- Better numerics
Several discretisation schemes have been added for better accuracy and better stability on ‘bad’ (e.g. tetrahedral) meshes.
- Single precision option
OpenFOAM can be switched from double to single precision for all floating point numbers to reduce memory requirements, e.g. for large steady-state external aerodynamics calculations (F1).
- OpenMPI
Support for and shipped with OpenMPI (although still released compiled with lam-MPI by default).

The other main changes have been predominately driven by commercial demand and comprise of the following:

- Development tools
New, automatic stack trace on code abort; optional initialisation of dynamically allocated memory to trap use of uninitialised floating point variables; processor-labelled error messages for easier debugging.
- Application development
The developments of the solvers centre around low and high speed aerodynamics, heat transfer and buoyancy-driven flows. There are many new utilities, particularly for mesh conversion/manipulation and post-processing.
- Mesh handling
There has a major reorganisation and development of mesh structures to improve capability for generation, topological change, sliding interfaces, etc.
- Switchable base system of units
Physical constants are no longer hard-coded but read in from file enabling the use of a different base system of units from the default (SI).
- Changes to models
There are some changes in particular relating to wall functions of turbulence models.
- Library restructure
The finite volume method is separated from the main library so that other discretisation techniques may be easily supported; libraries have been reordered to prevent cyclic dependencies.
- Compiler
Released compiled with GCC 4.1, a version with superior optimisation, better adherence to the C++ standard and improved error messaging; support for the Intel C++ 9.0 compiler.

For further information, see the Release Notes

To download OpenFOAM 1.3, click here