Benchmark and validation of Open Source CFD codes, with focus on compressible and rotating capabilities, for integration on the SimScale platform.

Abstract

The use of CFD is widely spread in industry today. However, smaller business have difficulty to make use of this tool, due to high costs for commercial licenses and hardware. As SimScale provides the combination of cloud computing with open source CFD software, the prerequisites to use CFD are lowered. To provide more diverse solvers for the platform, different CFD software are integrated onto the platform. As OpenFOAM was the sole CFD software on the platform at the start of this thesis, two other open source software were researched and compared to OpenFOAM. OpenFOAM was compared to Gerris and SU2 in three different validation cases. OpenFOAM and Gerris rotating body capabilities are investigated in an analytical solvable case of laminar Taylor-Couette ow. Two different approaches were used in OpenFOAM, where AMI (Adaptive Mesh Interface) and MRF (Multiple Reference Frame) were used to solve the problem. OpenFOAM and SU2's turbulent capabilities are compared using a turbulent at plate case from Wieghardt [1]. Compressible transonic ow over a RAE2822 airfoil was set up for OpenFOAM and SU2. The results were compared to data from NASA [2] It was found that the rotating body capabilities (MRF and AMI) of OpenFOAM were suitable for integration onto the SimScale platform. Gerris as a software was deemed to be easy to work with, but would require a new work ow on the platform to be integrated. SU2 was integrated onto the platform during this thesis work, but was deemed to still su er from some early development issues as its first release was done in January 2013.