[Doug-123]

Hi All,

My first post here...

OK, so I am working on a personal project to design and build a car (see sig).
The CAD for the design I've produced in SolidEdge from which I can produce various outputs to mesh from such as STL.

In terms of CFD I'm looking to do relatively simple aerodynamic analysis i.e. drag, lift and centre of pressure at relatively slow speeds of 100m/s or less.

At the moment I'm trying to get going with OpenFOAM, for which I've built an 64 bit Ubuntu virtual machince for it to run on and got V1.7.1 installed, though I confess to also being a Linux - Unix noob also.

I've run the first set of tutorials, I think I'm more confused by Linux than OpenFOAM at this stage.

So to my first set of questions:
1. Is OpenFOAM the best open source or at least cheap code available for the task?
2. I cannot find the documentation for the Motorbike tutorial? Which must be due to my ignorance, can someone point me in the right direction for that?

Thanks,

[pete]

For external car aerodynamics OpenFOAM is most likely the best free CFD code. OpenFOAM is used by several large car manufacturers people tell me. The problem with using OpenFOAM is that you need to complement it with a good mesh tool. There are not a lot of free good meshers around.

[siri]

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/mai...tml#post284464

check it out !

[Doug-123]

Hi Siri,

Lovely idea, at the moment there's just not the time in my day to help you out.
I've seen several open source car-type projects fail, IMHO you need a benevolent dictator to basically get the thing at least 75% finished before you can usefully engage other people on a project such as this.