Is it hard to learn OpenFOAM?

OpenFOAM is really a great CFD software. It is easy to get, but the price you pay is a time you spend on learning it. After nine years in the OpenFOAM business, I have seen hundreds of people starting with OpenFOAM from a scratch. Some of them succeeded, some of them failed.

How much time does it take to learn OpenFOAM?

OpenFOAM simply allows you to control every aspect of the CFD process, unlike the commercial options that act much like a black box. Depending on how computer savvy you are, you can expect it to take two weeks or several months to truly learn how to use OpenFOAM.

How do I start studying CFD?

For beginners, CFD is all about solving fluid flow and heat transfer problems. At later stage CFD might be used for multiphase flows, chemical reactions etc., but the start point is fluid flow and heat transfer problems. CFD software always gives some sort of results.

What should I learn before CFD?

Prerequisites: Prerequisites for the course include basic knowledge of fluid mechanics, linear algebra, partial differential equations and average programming skills.

How long does it take to install OpenFOAM?

Serial compilation takes several hours, whereas compilation on 8 cores/threads should take approximately one hour, possibly less, depending on the processor.

Is CFD difficult to learn?

It is very critical to understand basics concepts of CFD before you start using it for analysis and solution of industrial problem. In long run what will distinguish good CFD engineer from average engineer is his/her understanding about CFD fundamentals. This milestone is considered as one of the tough one to cross.

How difficult is it to learn CFD?

The problem with CFD is like any complex tool you can easily mis-use it. You can have a very pretty picture but that does not mean it is a good solution. Unfortunatly, CFD has a very steep initial learning curve. You will be frustrated for a while before you can use CFD tools very effective.

Is OpenFOAM reliable?

“OpenFoam for University Project” One can get accurate and reliable results form OpenFOAM than many other softwares available. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

How can I learn more about using OpenFOAM technology?

There are essentially 3 ways you can learn about using OpenFOAM technology: Read/view and study anything and everything you can find about OpenFOAM technology. Subscribe and participate in one or more courses that teach how to use OpenFOAM technology. Experiment on your own.

What units does OpenFOAM use to define values?

Check the units defined with the usual vector structure that OpenFOAM uses, e.g. [0 2 -2 0 0 0], which is usually defined for field files and for some parameters in dictionary files. Space character is used as a separator between values; Semi-colons (;) are the standard line terminators for the definition of a particular value.

Can OpenFOAM be used to investigate heat transfer problems?

Tobias Holzmann used OpenFOAM® to investigate heat transfer problems during his Bachelor thesis. The results were »okay-level« and did match with semi-empirical data and also more or less with measurement data.

Where can I find the OpenFOAM+ and community foam-extend websites?

The OpenFOAM+ website is www.openfoam.com and is maintained by the ESI-OpenCFD. The community foam-extend website is foam-extend.org and is maintained by the community that uses OpenFOAM technology and by Wikki Ltd.