[sabrehagen]

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to the CFD world and am trying to understand the online ecosystem. As such I have a few questions!

Is there a 'GitHub for CFD'? That is, is there a website where I can find people's CFD projects to learn from? Ideally I'd like to download their files, inspect them, play around, etc, in order to learn rapidly.

A second question is what is the established best practice for working on CFD projects with others? Do people use dropbox or google drive? What's the best practice 'work flow'?

Lastly, how do you find out about new interesting CFD projects people are working on?

Thanks,


Jackson

[mprinkey]

OpenFOAM, Gerris, Saturne, and OpenFVM are all open source CFD codes that come immediately to mind, some of which are on sourceforge. Others have their own repositories. There is no central CFD repository because CFD is a varied topic and while many codes share similar capabilities and technologies, they often have very different focus areas and have been developed by very different groups over the course of decades. The best place to interface with people doing CFD is likely right here. The sub-forums have a lot of knowledgeable people about and a lot of accumulated Q&As.

Your question about best practices are going to be highly (HIGHLY!) project specific. That is like asking if there is a best practices for coding text editors....VI, Emacs, Eclipse are all wildly different projects and likely have very different coding standards, submission requirements, etc. It's going to be the same with CFD codes.

OpenFOAM is probably the most vibrant community among the Open Source projects. But coding for it is NOTHING like coding for any of the other CFD codes. Gerris is also capable but a bit more niche. Also well structured and interesting, but it has its own style too. I honestly haven't looked at other source codes much besides MFIX and Fluent, so I can't comment on the others. The code you chose to work on will dictate the next six months (or YEARS!) of your life as you learn the ins and outs of making things work. Chose based on your particular application area.

[sabrehagen]

Originally Posted by mprinkey

OpenFOAM, Gerris, Saturne, and OpenFVM are all open source CFD codes that come immediately to mind, some of which are on sourceforge. Others have their own repositories. There is no central CFD repository because CFD is a varied topic and while many codes share similar capabilities and technologies, they often have very different focus areas and have been developed by very different groups over the course of decades. The best place to interface with people doing CFD is likely right here. The sub-forums have a lot of knowledgeable people about and a lot of accumulated Q&As.

Your question about best practices are going to be highly (HIGHLY!) project specific. That is like asking if there is a best practices for coding text editors....VI, Emacs, Eclipse are all wildly different projects and likely have very different coding standards, submission requirements, etc. It's going to be the same with CFD codes.

OpenFOAM is probably the most vibrant community among the Open Source projects. But coding for it is NOTHING like coding for any of the other CFD codes. Gerris is also capable but a bit more niche. Also well structured and interesting, but it has its own style too. I honestly haven't looked at other source codes much besides MFIX and Fluent, so I can't comment on the others. The code you chose to work on will dictate the next six months (or YEARS!) of your life as you learn the ins and outs of making things work. Chose based on your particular application area.

The advice about which code to choose for the coming 6 months or more is really valuable, thanks.

I've gone and looked at each of the names you mentioned. For each of OpenFOAM, Gerris, Saturne, and OpenFVM, is there a community surrounding each? Do they have forums/a place to share knowledge? I couldn't see anything to that effect.

Do people in the CFD community use git or version control to manage their files?

Is there a place where you can go to find people's source files? In that sense a GitHub for CFD?

[davidwilcox]

if you want to work with DNS or LES using spectral element methods (SEM), you can check out NEK5000. it is free and there is a forum that comes with it. The examples in the repo give you a good start for example turbulent channel, flow over an external cylinder, rotating lid, etc. There are some source files in GITHUB as well.

[SergeAS]

Originally Posted by sabrehagen

The advice about which code to choose for the coming 6 months or more is really valuable, thanks.

I've gone and looked at each of the names you mentioned. For each of OpenFOAM, Gerris, Saturne, and OpenFVM, is there a community surrounding each? Do they have forums/a place to share knowledge? I couldn't see anything to that effect.

Do people in the CFD community use git or version control to manage their files?

Is there a place where you can go to find people's source files? In that sense a GitHub for CFD?

Hmm...What is your goal in CFD?

Even if you have the source code, the theoretical background in the CFD extremely necessary (ImHO).

Big, but not complete list of the open source CFD codes you can found on this site. http://www.cfd-online.com/Wiki/Codes#Solvers

Also on this site presents two active forums of users and developers of CFD open source codes:

OpenFOAM: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/openfoam/
SU2: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/su2/

Both codes (or it's forks) also present on GitHub (as well as many other CFD codes)