[noodleluvmay]

Hello,

This might be a really basic question, but haven't found much information on it.

I am currently using OpenFOAM 18.10, running a simulation at steady state for 500 time steps with simpleFoam, and output gives me forces and force coefficient values. But because of the nature of the geometry, the flow appears to be transient, and all of the force values would vary slightly for each of the time steps.

So my question is, would there be any ways to generate a time averaged value for the force coefficients, say for example from time step 450-500 out of all the values?

If so, what kind of code or function should I be adopting?
Or would it also be possible to achieve in post processing?
(Sorry if this question ends up being more suited to the post processing topic)

Here's my very basic version of controlDict, not sure if this will be the place where I define these things:

FoamFile
{
    version     2.0;
    format      ascii;
    class       dictionary;
    object      controlDict;
}
// * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * //

application     simpleFoam;

startFrom       latestTime;

startTime       0;

stopAt          endTime;

endTime         500;

deltaT          1;

writeControl    timeStep;

writeInterval   100;

purgeWrite      0;

writeFormat     binary;

writePrecision  6;

writeCompression uncompressed;

timeFormat      general;

timePrecision   6;

runTimeModifiable true;

functions
{
    #include "streamLines"
    #include "cuttingPlane"
    #include "forceCoeffs"
	#include "forces"
}

I would really appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction,

thank you!
-Nian

[tomf]

Hi,

I am not sure if this is already available in your version of OpenFOAM, but at least for v1912 there is the valueAverage functionObject:

valueAverage1
{
    type        valueAverage;
    libs        ("libfieldFunctionObjects.so");
    writeToFile yes;
    log         yes;
    functionObject forceCoeffs1;
    fields      (Cm Cd Cl);
    window      0.5;
}

(The above code was copied from the documentation)

The alternative would be to read the data from the outputfile with another program (I prefer python).

[noodleluvmay]

Hi,

There seems to be only fieldAverage function in 18.10, but I appreciate you posting the documentation!

I suppose post processing in another program would be the easiest in this case then, just wanted to check in case there is an easier way.

Thank you!
-Nian

[eloy_785]

thanks for the info
but if I want to average the force instead of the force coefficient, I want to know what fields are the correct instead of Cm Cd Cl.


valueAverage1
{
type valueAverage;
libs ("libfieldFunctionObjects.so");
writeToFile yes;
log yes;
functionObject forceCoeffs1;
fields (Cm Cd Cl);
window 0.5;
}

Regards