OpenFOAM (OpenCFD Ltd)

The OpenFOAM® (Open Field Operation and Manipulation) CFD Toolbox can simulate anything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions, turbulence and heat transfer, to solid dynamics, electromagnetics and the pricing of financial options. OpenFOAM is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Recommended Setup

By default OpenFOAM creates a project directory in your home directory. This is used to store various items related to running OpenFOAM. However, there is a restriction on your home directory which means that this is often not enough space for OpenFOAM to operate. To avoid issues you should create a directory in a RDS project space and then symlink it. First load an OpenFOAM module and then follow these instructions:

mkdir /rds/projects/[project]/[my_openfoam_directory]
cd ~/
ln -s /rds/projects/[project]/[my_openfoam_directory] ${WM_PROJECT}

In this, [project] and [my_openfoam_directory] should be changed to be a suitable directory in a suitable project.

OpenFOAM Environment Setup

The command:

source ${FOAM_BASH}

runs the OpenFOAM configuration file in the current bash shell session. In some cases the source ${FOAM_BASH} will return an error code even though it has successfully completed. If you use set -e then this should be placed after the source command.

Note, some older versions of OpenFOAM require the command ${FOAM_CONFIG} instead.

More Information

For more information visit the OpenFOAM (OpenCFD Ltd) website.

Available Versions

These versions of OpenFOAM (OpenCFD Ltd) are available on the BEAR systems (BlueBEAR and BEAR Cloud VMs). These will be retained in accordance with our Applications Support and Retention Policy.