Documentation of solvers and models
 

Hi,

I am looking for a documentation of the dependence of solvers on property files.
E.g. where does it say that pisoFoam expects a turbulenceProperties file?

And more importantly: Where can I find a documentation on the models (e.g. kEpsilon) and their dependencies on model coefficients defined in the 0 folder (e.g. nut)?

I find it quite tedious to extract that information from my error messages or copy poorly documented tutorials.

And most importantly: Is there a documentation on the physics of the models. E.g. why did somebody bother writing it?

Thanks for the help,
Fynn

Greetings Fynn,

At the moment, the main source for case structure set-up are the tutorial cases that provide the example case structure. This is one of the reasons why the OpenFOAM User Guide starts off with a few of the tutorials that are present in OpenFOAM in chapter 2: http://cfd.direct/openfoam/user-guide/

1. Again, check the tutorial cases for examples.
2. The source code documentation also has some more details: http://foam.sourceforge.net/docs/cpp/index.html - work has been going on towards making things better documented, but it's still a long journey ahead.

Short answer: If A or B is missing, it's due to the lack of funding and/or lack of contributions (as in "code" and "documentation").

Long answer: OpenFOAM has only seen proper development (i.e. not restricted to academic developments) because a few dedicated people seek commercially-private funding for commercial development of OpenFOAM.

If I'm not mistaken and as far as I know, back in 2000, at the now defunct Nabla Ltd, they began writing those documents, namely the OpenFOAM User Guide and the OpenFOAM Programmer's Guide. These are still available, but the Programmer's Guide is no longer updated, due to the lack of funding :(.

Problem is that most companies that pay for further development of OpenFOAM, mostly only care about getting the results for their own projects, i.e. the missing feature they need. Documentation is rarely part of the contract, possibly only provided as part of the support, or because it was the hiring company that has the already documented specifications; and possibly when it it is part of the funding, then it is potentially subject to a non-disclosure agreement.

The source code is always made public when developed by the official developers, as part of the contracts and the GPL license, but the documentation is a whole other ball game :(

Right now, training sessions is the primary way to learn how to use OpenFOAM faster, which is also a way for the development companies to get some additional funding and to cover for costs that support contracts might not be enough to cover.

As for other/more sources of information, check this thread: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...-openfoam.html - I'm trying to gather as much information as possible for this very same reason/problem.
And if you wish to contribute, there this recent thread as well: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...echnology.html


Best regards,
Bruno

edit: I completely forgot before to mention about Caelus-CML, which is a fork of OpenFOAM and it also aims to be better documented: http://www.caelus-cml.com/