Need help with workflow. Completly new to CFD
 

Hello all : )

I am pretty confused right now and overwhelmed with a lot of information and i dont know exactly which way to go.

So here is my situation in a nut shell.

I just started to learn FreeCAD and i have designed a pretty decent wind turbine blade for practice. Geometry is good as well as smooth.

I installed the CFDOF workbench into freecad which installs openfoam in the background.

Here are my questions.

1. What is going to be the best workflow? Using freecad CFDOF workbench, then open results in paraview?
2. Use a mesher such as salome, then use openfoam, then paraview?
3. Is there a GUI for openfoam?
4? For a wind turbine blade, i have no idea what surface would be considered inlet and outlet? My first goal is to have a 4m/s wind hit the top surfce of the blade so i can see how many Newtons of force that surface is "feeling"

Thank you. I am trying my best here to describe my goals and situation, but this is all new to me so i hope it makes sense.

Now, i do understand the governing equations behind CFD, i just dont know the proper workflow and best practices for CFD at all. I have never had to do this: )

thank you much

Hey,

I can not help you with anything related to freecad. However, I can tell you that, from my experience, the best thing you could do is use freecad as a "geometry maker" only. Export the .step files to SALOME, in case you want to create a mesh there, or even if you want to rename the patches in there.

Regarding the mesh, snappyhexmesh is really powerful for more complex geometries. I sugest using first, since SALOME probably will only be able to make you a tetrahedral mesh. If you don't mind the increase in elements, go for it.