OpenFOAM¶

About¶

OpenFOAM is a popular engineering application toolbox. It’s open source and is used for simulating fluid flow around objects.

Workflow¶

Installing OpenFOAM with Gridware¶

Note

The flight environment will need to be activated before the environments can be created so be sure to run flight start or setup your environment to automatically activate the flight environment.

Create a gridware software environment:

[flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ flight env create gridware

Activate the environment:

[flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ flight env activate gridware

Locate available OpenFOAM versions:

<gridware> [flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ gridware search openfoam

Install OpenFOAM 4.1:

<gridware> [flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ gridware install apps/openfoam/4.1

Note

After pressing ‘y’ to accept the installation. Gridware will install various dependencies for OpenFOAM to ensure it runs

Checking OpenFOAM is Working¶

Load the OpenFOAM module:

<gridware> [flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ module load apps/openfoam

Check an OpenFOAM command can be seen by viewing the help page:
```
<gridware> [flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ icoFoam -help
```

Running a Simple OpenFOAM Job¶

Create a job script in the current working directory:

<gridware> [flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ cat << 'EOF' > myfoamjob.sh
#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH -N 1

# Activate environment and load OpenFOAM module
flight env activate gridware
module load apps/openfoam

# Create job directory from example job
cp -r $FOAM_TUTORIALS/incompressible/icoFoam/cavity/cavity $HOME/.
cd $HOME/cavity

# Calculate fluid pressure with OpenFOAM tools
blockMesh
checkMesh
icoFoam
EOF

Submit the job to the queue system:

<gridware> [flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ sbatch myfoamjob.sh

Check that the job is running (iit will take 1-2 minutes to complete):
```
<gridware> [flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ squeue
```

Viewing the Results¶

Once the cavity job has finished running, the results can be visualised through a desktop session.

Connect to VNC desktop (this is out of scope for this documentation, for more information on launching desktops, see the use documentation)

In a terminal on the desktop session, ensure that the OpenFOAM module is loaded:

[flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ flight env activate gridware
<gridware> [flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ module load apps/openfoam

Navigate to the cavity directory and launch the paraFoam viewer:

<gridware> [flight@gateway1 (scooby) ~]$ cd cavity
<gridware> [flight@gateway1 (scooby) cavity]$ paraFoam

In the window that opens, scroll down to “Mesh parts” and select all the boxes, then click apply
Next, change the display to ‘U’ in the dropdown menu, click play to change the timestamp and then click and drag to rotate the subject