OpenFOAM Projects

OpenFOAM (Open Field Operation and Manipulation) is a free and open source CFD software package created by the UK company OpenCFD Ltd.

The original development of OpenFOAM started in the late 1980s at Imperial College, London, by Prof. Hrvoje Jasak and Mr Henry Weller. The FOAM was sold by UK company Nabla Ltd. before being released as open source in 2004. The same year, Prof. Jasak founded Wikki Ltd. and launched foam-extend, a non-official version of OpenFOAM.

After that, two OpenFOAM versions are developed, the official version of OpenCFD Ltd. and the non-official version of Wikki Ltd. On 15th August 2011, OpenCFD announced its acquisition by Silicon Graphics International (SGI). On September 12th, the ESI Group announced the acquisition of OpenFOAM Ltd from SGI.

In the recent years OpenFOAM community has been growing fast and thus this software is becoming an important tool from both companies and academic organizations. The lack of maintained documentation makes it difficult for new users. The user and programmer’s guide do not provide many details, making difficult to learn OpenFOAM.

OpenFOAM is first and foremost a C++ library used to solve partial differential equations and ordinary differential equations. It is based on the finite volume method. By default, OpenFOAM is distributed with more than 80 solvers. This comprehensive library of solvers can be applied to many cases such as fluid mechanics, chemical reactions, heat transfer, turbulence, electromagnetics, etc.