[s195404]

Dear group,

I've been using FIDAP at The University of Queensland for quite a while, for the following scenario:
* 3D, turbulent, compressible flow around a building
* building has a heat source (fire) in it that is releasing chemicals and results in a buoyant plume
* there are other buildings around it influencing the flow
* I use custom boundary conditions at the inlet and at the fire (functional forms)

Without going into all the gruesome details, changes with the University's computer systems have made using FIDAP increasingly frustrating (32-bit vs 64-bit OS, connecting to different versions of the license server, trying to run FIDAP on Windows, etc).

I've happily stumbled across OpenFOAM (and Gmsh) and wonder if anyone has been using them to model bluff body or atmospheric flows. I would really value your comments on the possibility of using OpenFOAM for this problem. My particular concerns are with meshing (I'm quite adept at creating meshes in FIDAP's point-and-click interface) and with the boundary conditions (FIDAP uses FORTRAN to implement user-defined boundary conditions).

Thanks so much for your advice!

Regards,

Andrew Ward