[cnsidero]

The next major version of Caelus, 7.04, was released today. This release is the largest release to date with major new capabilities in both the library as well as application-based features. Here’s a summary of the new capabilities:

• cfMesh, a GPL meshing library from Creative Fields d.o.o. (https://sourceforge.net/projects/cfmesh/)
• PIMPLE-based incompressible transient solver with Lagrangian particle tracking [Applied CCM]
• Volume of Fluid (VOF) phase-fraction based solver for two incompressible, isothermal immiscible fluids with dynamic mesh motion [OpenFOAM Foundation]
• Major improvements to parallel pre-processing including the ability to decompose meshes and fields in parallel [OpenFOAM Foundation]
• New second-order gradient scheme using nodal averaged Green-Gauss (NAGauss), particularly beneficial for tetrahedral meshes [Applied CCM]
• Corrected face tangent surface normal gradient scheme with non-orthogonal correction (correctFT) [Applied CCM]
• Fixes for least squares gradient (LSQ) gradient that enables second order accuracy in both internal cells and boundaries [Applied CCM]
• PBiCGStab non-symmetric linear solver [OpenFOAM Foundation]
• SPAI(0) preconditioners and smoothers suitable for very large parallel applications [Applied CCM]
• Added incompressible and compressible kEpsilon turbulence models [OpenFOAM Foundation]
• Virtual Blade Model for high fidelilty rotorcraft modeling [OpenFOAM Foundation]
• Radial Basis Function (RBF) interpolator [LEMOS project; Frank Bos and Dubravko Matijasevic]
• RBF mesh motion solver [LEMOS project; Frank Bos and Dubravko Matijasevic]
• Rigid body dynamics model to model motion of multiple independent or linked rigid bodies with suite of constraints [OpenFOAM Foundation]
• Update to Scons build system. External contribution from Shreyas Ananthan.

There is a release notes PDF available on the download page with a more detailed description: http://www.caelus-cml.com/download/. We will be moving to annual releases for major upgrades to capabilities after this release.

Look to the source repository with 7.04 updates shortly: https://bitbucket.org/appliedccm/caelus-contributors

If you’re not already familiar with Caelus, you can read more about it on the website. Its free and open-source. The file formats are compatible with OpenFOAM but there have been many improvements to it such that it is now moving independently in its own direction.

We are happy to answer questions, technical or otherwise, by opening a thread on CFD-Online or directly through email: caelus@appliedccm.com. Please try not to use both for the same question - either or. If you want to ask questions other than about the release, if you don't mind, please open a new thread with Caelus somewhere in the title.

Stay up to date with Caelus on Twitter @caelus_cml or Facebook

Applied CCM is currently the maintainer and main developer of Caelus. If you’re interested in porting or developing your own application to Caelus, we’ll be happy to provide guidance. If you’ve developed a solver or model that you would like to include in Caelus check out the contributors repository. Any and all external contributors copyright will be kept in their contributed source files.

[philippose]

Hello,
A Good evening to you.

Can you please give some information as to which version of OpenFOAM the latest release of Caelus is based on?

On the website I found that the initial version of Caelus was forked out from OpenFOAM 2.1.1... However, have you been tracking and adding on the features / bug fixes of the foundation and / or the OpenFOAM-plus versions?

Also, are cases which are set up to run on OpenFOAM-plus or the foundation version directly compatible with Caelus 7.04?

Thank you.

Regards,
Philippose

[cnsidero]

philippose,

Caelus was originally forked from the last commit of OpenFOAM 2.1. That was however over 2.5 years ago. Since then Caelus has diverged on it's own path. It's a combination of brand new capabilities we have developed (platform support, build system, discretization, solvers, turbulence models), bug fixes and capabilities from the other versions of OpenFOAM, and other projects (freefoam, swak4Foam, cfMesh). We don't necessarily grab all the new features or updates - actually few - from the other versions only ones we can successfully validate and test.

As far as compatibility with tutorials from other versions, the heavy weight data - polyMesh, sets, zones, fields, etc - is the same format. Therefore pre- and post-processing applications that can read/write OpenFOAM data, can also be used with Caelus. The general structure of the lightweight data is also same. What has changed are specific library capabilities which naturally require different names, e.g. divSchemes, gradSchemes, preconditioners, smoothers, etc. Additionally, we have removed many untested or undocumented schemes and models so something that may have existed in OpeFOAM may not exist in Caelus. So strictly speaking, no, but fairly close.

One notable incompatibility of Caelus compared to the current OF+ and the OFdev versions is the turbulence model classes. Those were massively changed in v3 of OpenFOAM, whereas we choose to stick with the v2 style of the turbulence model classes. Therefore setting up turbulence models in Caelus is the same as the v2 style. In general, we don't change the low level APIs in Caelus unless there is a very good reason and if we do we try maintain some level of backward compatibility.

Hope that helps to answer your questions. Let me know if you have anything more specific.

Regards, Chris

[cnsidero]

We were asked to clarify (elsewhere) about the origins and copyright ownership of the Radial Basis Function (RBF) source code. The RBF source code in Caelus came from the LEMOS project at the University of Rostock:

https://github.com/LEMOS-Rostock

All the specific author copyright statements from the LEMOS RBF source code have remained in Caelus. If there were any mistakes in this regard in this or any other source code in Caelus, please point out the specific location and we will make the appropriate change.

Thanks, Chris

[cnsidero]

In lieu of the last post, I've updated the original announcement details with the origin and/or copyright holders of the particular feature that was added.

While the original copyright owner names are in the source code, we will try to be more explicit in our announcements about where code comes from and who is the copyright holder.

-Chris