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Using OpenFOAM on the Blade Center
- About OpenFOAM
- Serial Usage
- Serious Serial Usage
- Parallel Runs
- About OpenFOAM
Software licenses for commercial finite element codes are
more expensive than the hardware. Use of commercial codes
can be subject to license restrictions.
OpenFOAM is "open source" and versatile, so
if someone learns to use it, they can use it anywhere. It is used for
example by Boeing engineers who suggested to us.
OpenFOAM is developed by the OpenCFD corporation, founded in
2004. Standard solvers include 'basic' CFD, incompressible flows,
compressible flows, combustion, electromagnetics, and solid dynamics.
Partitioning routines and choices of linear algebra solvers are
provided.
One use is for liquid solid interactions.
A program called paraview provides visualization.
For more about
OpenFOAM capabilities, see About OpenFOAM
- Serial Usage
From one of the login64 nodes on the blade center, (login04 or login05),
source /home/gwhowell/scripts/foam.csh
will add the needed paths. Example codes are available in
/usr/local/apps/foam/x86_64/OpenFOAM-1.5/tutorials
To try the examples, you can copy them to your /share directory.
(If you don't already have a directory in /share, you can make one by
mkdir /share/myunityID ).
cd /usr/local/apps/foam/x86_64/OpenFOAM-1.5
tar cvf /share/myunityID/tutorials.tar tutorials
cd /share/myunityID
tar xvf tutorials.tar
To run foam, use
source /home/gwhowell/scripts/foam.csh
to set environmental variables. The subdirectories give simple
examples for a variety of problems. A web page describing usage is
OpenFOAM
tutorial. The following details how to run a first example.
cd /share/gwhowell/tutorials/icoFoam/cavity
blockMesh
icoFoam
foamToVTK
paraview
"foamToVTK" converts to VTK
form, usable by the paraview GUI, which presumably pops with the
paraview command. In the paraview GUI click on File and VTK, then
on cavity_1.vtk and then Display under the Object Inspector.
Then click Set Color and pick some color. Scrolling down to
Style, scroll through the Representation and try Wireframe.
Many other examples and detailed explanation as to input
files and file formats are found in the online tutorial.
- Serious Serial Usage
Only short jobs should be run from the login nodes.
Longer jobs should be submitted to the LSF scheduler so that
they can run on any of the thousand or so computational cores.
Postprocessing with the GUI interface can be run on the VCL using
a 64 bit HPC Linux image (http://vcl.ncsu.edu).
As a first try, it's convenient to run the same simple job
to make sure it goes without a hitch.
Assume that in tutorials/icoFoam/cavity directory, you have
the following file
#! /bin/csh
#BSUB -q debug
source /home/gwhowell/scripts/foam.csh
#BSUB -W 5
#BSUB -n 1
#BSUB -R em64t
blockMesh
icoFoam
foamToVTK
#BSUB -o /share/myname/out.%J
#BUSB -e /share/myname/err.%J
If the above file is bfoam, then the job can be submitted by
bsub < bfoam
The #BSUB -W 5 line asks for 5 minutes.
Once you know the job runs, edit the file to ask for more time. Also,
make sure the -o and -e output and error files are writing to a directory
for which you have write privileges.
- Parallel Runs
Parallel runs will require a similar file to a serial batch run and should
be feasible with OpenFOAM. If an NCSU user needs help beyond that offered here,
please contact gary_howell@ncsu.edu.
An example of a parallel LSF run is found at
CSC Foam tutorial
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