OpenFOAM and installation of ver. 2.1.0 in Ubuntu 11.10

I've been wanting to install and try this software for awhile now.  It is called OpenFOAM and is a free and open source CFD and numerical software.  While ANSYS Fluent and others are great and heavily developed, they are quite expensive and un-readily available to many users.  I've done some research and OpenFOAM seems to be the leader of the free world.  They seem to be very open and constantly updated and developed.

About the OpenFOAM Foundation: http://www.openfoam.org/index.php

The OpenFOAM® Foundation is a non-stock corporation, incorporated on 5th August 2011 in Delaware, USA. It is a nonprofit organization whose “specific objectives and purposes... shall be to promote and manage the free open source distribution of the OpenFOAM software” (Bylaws, Article II). The Foundation has taken on the guardianship of the OpenFOAM software, previously undertaken by OpenCFD Ltd. Through its bylaws, it formalises the commitment, begun by OpenCFD in 2004, to ensure OpenFOAM is free and open source only. It is supported by SGI and lists Mark Barrenechea (CEO, SGI) and Henry Weller (creator of OpenFOAM) amongst its Board of Directors. 

The Foundation distributes the current repository version of OpenFOAM (and will distribute future ‘version’ releases of OpenFOAM) under the GNU general public licence (GPL). The GPL gives users the freedom to modify and redistribute the software and a guarantee of continued free use — as long as the terms of the GPL are adhered to. There are two elements to the GPL that provide protection against exploitation by companies including OpenFOAM within non-free and/or closed source software products. First, when any modified version of the software is redistributed, the source code must also be made available by the distributor. Secondly, any modified version can only legally be distributed open source under the GPL and software that links intimately enough to OpenFOAM has to be distributed under the GPL as well. 

People and organisations contribute to OpenFOAM on the understanding that their contributions become part of the public commons of free software and are not exploited by producers of non-free software. The Foundation exists to ensure this, adopting a suitably strong, open source license, i.e. the GPL. It will manage the software code base and promote the software, e.g. through its website www.openfoam.org, whose content will grow over time. OpenFOAM Foundation 15th August 2011

About OpenFOAM: http://www.openfoam.com/

The OpenFOAM® (Open Field Operation and Manipulation) CFD Toolbox is a free, open source CFD software package produced by OpenCFD Ltd. It has a large user base across most areas of engineering and science, from both commercial and academic organisations. OpenFOAM has an extensive range of features to solve anything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions, turbulence and heat transfer, to solid dynamics and electromagnetics. It includes tools for meshing, notably snappyHexMesh, a parallelised mesher for complex CAD geometries, and for pre- and post-processing. Almost everything (including meshing, and pre- and post-processing) runs in parallel as standard, enabling users to take full advantage of computer hardware at their disposal. 

By being open, OpenFOAM offers users complete freedom to customise and extend its existing functionality, either by themselves or through support from OpenCFD. It follows a highly modular code design in which collections of functionality (e.g. numerical methods, meshing, physical models, …) are each compiled into their own shared library. Executable applications are then created that are simply linked to the library functionality. OpenFOAM includes over 80 solver applications that simulate specific problems in engineering mechanics and over 170 utility applications that perform pre- and post-processing tasks, e.g. meshing, data visualisation, etc.

The OpenFOAM Team: http://www.openfoam.com/about/

The OpenFOAM Team produces the OpenFOAM® open source CFD toolbox and distributes it through the OpenFOAM Foundation. The OpenFOAM Team was formed at OpenCFD Ltd, a company established in 2004 to coincide with the release of its OpenFOAM software under general public licence. The company was founded by: Henry Weller, the creator of OpenFOAM and its chief developer from inception to the present day; Chris Greenshields; and, Mattijs Janssens. In 2011, the team moved to SGI Corp, following its acquisition of OpenCFD Ltd.

OpenFOAM Services:

The OpenFOAM Team has unrivalled experience with OpenFOAM. Over the past 7 years they have successfully provided services to numerous science/engineering companies, consultancies and universities. Developments: written over half a million of lines of code. Support: delivered over 10,000 hours of support. Training: delivered over 100 training courses to over 1000 OpenFOAM users. The OpenFOAM Team is Henry Weller, Chris Greenshields, Mattijs Janssens, Andy Heather, Sergio Ferraris, Jenya Collings, Gijs Wierink and Laurence McGlashan.

I recommend you check this out if you are interested in a free CFD simulator.  While it may not have all the bells and whistles of Fluent or other similar software, but I bet you can get just as much done and in the process understand what you are doing much better as it can be the tendency to treat more fancy software as a black box.  OpenFOAM has meshing and post processing capabilities (ParaView), supports many imports of meshes from other software, has many solvers, many models, and many libraries, it also has great documentation, tutorials, and community support.  Training and customer support is also offered.

To install OpenFOAM simply go to http://www.openfoam.org/download/ where they have choices of the Ubuntu Deb Pack, SuSE RPM Pack, the Source Pack, and the Git Repository.  Luckily for us, I am using Ubuntu 11.10 so I simply went to their page for that installation here: http://www.openfoam.org/download/ubuntu.php

I followed the instructions and had no problems until I got to the end where it says Getting Started.  It seems to assume that a directory exist in your home directory called OpenFOAM.  However, this is not where OpenFOAM was installed as you can see it is installed in /opt/openfoam210 instead.  So you need to first create the directory OpenFOAM in your home folder then everything else should be fine in the directions.

This is the link for the documentation (tutorials and more): http://www.openfoam.org/docs/user/

One downside to OpenFOAM is that it is not cross platform.  It only works on Linux such as Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, etc.

Here is a screen shot showing that OpenFOAM installed into the opt directory.

Here is a screen shot showing the /home/timbarber/OpenFoam/timbarber-2.1.0/run/tutorial tree.  This is the step where the tutorial material is copied from the /opt/openfoam210 directory.

Here is the message I get after editing the .bashrc file then either typing source $HOME/.bashrc and then typing icoFoam -help or opening a new terminal window then typing icoFoam -help

Screen shot after running blockMesh in the cavity directory.

Viewing the mesh in ParaView by typing paraFoam in the terminal.

After following the instructions on OpenFOAM's user document web page, this is a view of the mesh.