Differences and similarities between solvers called "fireFoam"
 

There are several solvers called "fireFoam", for example
https://github.com/fireFoam-dev/fireFoam-2.4.x or the "official" http://foam.sourceforge.net/docs/cpp/a03024.html.
Are these separate developments, or do the codes represent earlier and later stages of the same solver?

Which one is the solver used by FM Global? Is one of the solvers documented (not talking about generated doxygen pages) or validated?

Quick answer: AFAIK, the repository https://github.com/fireFoam-dev/fireFoam-2.4.x is maintained by FMGlobal. A bit of googling and I found this presentation: https://www.engineering.leeds.ac.uk/...20fireFoam.pdf

Looking at the OpenFOAM-history repository, the first historic commit in OpenCFD's internal repository for this solver is this: https://github.com/OpenCFD/OpenFOAM-...ef13a2182ac9d8

My guess, based on the presentation and the source code, is that this was first created under a contract with the help of Henry Weller and Sergio Ferraris, and introduced into OpenFOAM at that time; but then FMGlobal continued development independently from some point in time. In other words:

• The version in OpenFOAM is possibly the first major implementation and still maintained up to this day, but mostly as what I guess is a generic solver. In other words: should work as intended for the specific scenarios for which is was conceived... which I don't know what they were.
• FMGlobal has continued development independently and has made their developments public overtime, either on Google Code or at Github. As they seem to have access to experimental data, their are able to validate their modifications. The code may or may not respect the same coding standards as OpenFOAM does; I have not studied the code to say if it does or not follow the coding guidelines: http://www.openfoam.org/contrib/

You might have better luck in contacting FMGlobal for more details about the development and status of their own fireFoam variant.

Thank you very much for these explanations. I will study and use the FM Global version, and later compare it with the version included with OpenFOAM.