OpenFOAM version 1.1 is the first major upgrade of OpenFOAM, the Open Source CFD Toolbox, since its launch under the under the GNU General Public Licence 3 months ago.

The most significant development is a comprehensive restructuring of the underlying database which handles object I/O and data lookups. A hierarchical structure has been implemented to allow multiple regions to be contained within a single database. This lays the foundations for faster, more reliable development of fully-coupled solvers in areas such as conjugate heat transfer and fluid-structure interaction.

Version 1.1 contains a new solver for variable density, transient, turbulent flow with heat transfer. There are many new meshing features including: a utility to convert meshes in the netgen Neutral format (including patch information) to the OpenFOAM format; a utility to make batch changes to individual mesh elements; improved cell splitting for mesh refinement; extended octree with find-in-box and nearest-to-line searching. The startup scripts have been improved significantly to make it easier to build binaries from source.