[schwarczi]

Hi there,

My company confidents over migration to OpenFOAM from our recently used commercial Fluent software in the following one or two years. I have opened this new thread to ask your advise.

Our company provides services for the oil&gas and nuclear industries. Common studies undertaken are as follows:

• Poisonous and flammable gas dispersion
• Natural and forced ventilation efficiency
• Helideck wind environments
• Flare combustion
• etc.

We developed a number of special codes (UDFs, journal files, automatization codes) for Fluent in the last few years, hence migrating our whole technology could be a huge challenge but I have no doubt that it is worth to do and we will enjoy the benefits of using an open-source CFD package in the further future. We have used SnappyHexMesh for a while and also have some experience in OpenFOAM, I am also aware of possibilities of conversion from and to Fluent.

However, migrating everything is a long process and I would appreciate any advice how and where should we start? What would be the difficulties we have to face to? I would be grateful of any suggestion from anybody who has got experience in this subject and has already gone through a similar process. Good papers and other posts I have not found yet would be welcomed, as well.


Thank you in advance,
Schwarczi

[alberto]

Hi, you probably would need to provide a slightly more detailed description of the models used in your company, so that who answers can base his answer of what is available in OpenFOAM already and what you have to actually convert.

For example, some of the applications you cite, namely forced ventilation, should not require a lot of work, some other might require more coding to add models you might need.

Also, about journaling and automation, what kind of automation would you need? Mesh generation? Case management? Post-processing? ...

Best,

[eugene]

For a project of the scope you are describing I would strongly suggest you get a support contract from one of the companies that specialise in OPENFOAM development.

Check section 9.3 on this page: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Main_Page

[alberto]

Originally Posted by eugene

For a project of the scope you are describing I would strongly suggest you get a support contract from one of the companies that specialise in OPENFOAM development.

Check section 9.3 on this page: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Main_Page

In chosing this company, you might want to consider how much they contribute to OpenFOAM as open source project.

The first two (OpenCFD and Wikki) clearly do that, and maybe some other too, but I believe that is an important factor when it comes to choose who to hire for support, since the future of the code depends on the health of those two companies.

Best,
A.