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New CastNet Release: GUI Environment for OpenFOAM and CalculiX

CastNet V5 for OpenFOAM® and CalculiX

DHCAE Tools GmbH is proud to present a new release of the modelling and simulation environment CastNet.

CastNet is a pre-processing tool that supports the complete workflow of CFD applications: CAD import, mesh generation and case setup, runtime control and monitoring of the simulation job and, finally, post-processing.

CAD import: CastNet is capable to work with geometric modelling kernel input files directly (Parasolid, ACIS, Granite). This way, all customary CAD systems are supported.

Supported open source solver technology: CastNet facilitates a convenient and professional usage of open source solver technology in an industrial environment.

CastNet provides a comprehensive support for the OpenFOAM® releases, starting with 2.1, up to

• OpenFOAM-Foundation Release 4.0/4.1 and
• ESI-OpenCFD Release v1606+.

For Windows users the OpenFOAM® ports blueCFD-Core-2.3 and blueCFD-Core-2016 from blueCAPE are supported.

For Structural Analysis the FEA solver CalculiX is supported by CastNet. CalculiX is a finite element solver for stress analysis with non-linear capabilities such as contact or non-linear material behaviour.



Meshing technology: CastNet provides a reliable and stable CFD/FEA meshing technology including boundary layer meshing, mesh extrusion capabilities and hex-core meshing. Furthermore, OpenFOAM®'s snappyHexMesh is supported to work with the CAD model entities (regions, surfaces, edges) directly.

HPC Cloud Resources: DHCAE allows using HPC cloud resources directly from the GUIs, for example 4 instances Amazon-c4.8xlarge with a total of 72 physical cores. The CloudSME platform guarantees a transparent cost management and high usability.

Extended snappyHexMesh support: In the new CastNet release the support of Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) solvers has been extended to snappyHexMesh. An arbitrary number of regions can be set up for CHT cases.

Extended fvOption support: CAD regions can now be defined as cellZones with additional source terms during runtime, for example heat sources for the heat equation etc.

Extended boundary condition support: More boundary conditions are supported directly, for example variableHeightFlowRate for VOF applications or individual wall interaction for Lagrangian particle solvers.

Templated case setup: CastNet provides an efficient template system to speed up the case definition significantly. Predefined optimized solver settings and mesh parameters can be applied directly, thus reducing time-consuming and error-prone manual definitions.

FSI support: DHCAE provides extensions for FSI simulations with OpenFOAM coupled with CalculiX.



Key features of OpenFOAM® support: CastNet supports more than 30 OpenFOAM® solvers and numerous OpenFOAM® utilities. In particular, a direct setup for the conjugate heat transfer solvers is available. Arbitrary Mesh Interface (AMI) applications can be defined within the GUI as well. Cell zone and face zone based features (porous zones, baffles, fans etc.) can be defined on the CAD model entities directly.

Cross platform support: CastNet can be run on both Windows and Linux. Simulation cases can be exchanged between the different operating systems. This way the user can stay within his Windows environment for CAD applications, mesh generation and case setup while running the simulations on a high performance Linux cluster.

Runtime job control: With the runGui tool, a suitable and powerful job control system is provided. Amongst others, convergence monitoring, access to OpenFOAM® utilities, automatic solver stabilization during runtime and direct access to HPC Cloud Resources is available within a single graphical user interface.

Video tutorials: Our video tutorials allow you to quickly familiarize yourself with CastNet. Some demonstration videos are provided on our web page.

This offering is not approved or endorsed by OpenCFD Limited, producer and distributor of the OpenFOAM software and owner of the OPENFOAM® and OpenCFD® trade marks.

http://www.dhcae-tools.com/CastNet.html