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Best OSS CFD Package For High School Physics?

Posted by timothy on from the why-not-stop-at-algebra-I? dept.

RobHart writes "I am teaching a 'physics of flight' unit to grade 11 Physics students. Part of the unit will have the students running tests on several aerofoils in a wind tunnel. I also want to expose them to a Computational Fluid Dynamics package which will allow them to contrast experimental results with those produced by the CFD package. There are a number of open source CFDs available (Windows- or Linux-based are both fine), but I don't have much time to evaluate which are the simplest to use in terms of setting up the mesh, initial conditions, etc. — a very important issue as students do not have much time in this unit." Can anyone offer insight about ease of use for programs in this niche?

12 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. openFOAM by Amigan · · Score: 4, Informative

    Check out openFOAM. You might find that it meets your needs.

    --
    "Software is the difference between hardware and reality"
    1. Re:openFOAM by blair1q · · Score: 3, Informative

      Took some digging but I found a page where they actually show some pictures:

              http://www.openfoam.com/docs/user/cavity.php#x5-110002.1.2

      You'd think they'd have some color somewhere on the home page, but OSS types rarely have a marketing clue...

    2. Re:openFOAM by Linux_ho · · Score: 1, Informative

      I don't see the vendor lock in, care to clue me in?

      That wasn't an actual person you were responding to, it was one of the mindless "commercial software BAAAD" bots that inhabits Slashdot.

      --
      include $sig;
      1;
  2. Code_Saturne by thatcadguy · · Score: 4, Informative

    I like Code_Saturne. It has a GUI that greatly simplifies the whole process. You can use SALOME to make the initial model and then mesh it, and also use it to visualize the results. All of these programs come precompiled on a live Linux distro called CAElinux. http://www.code-saturne.org/ http://www.caelinux.com/CMS/ http://www.salome-platform.org/ In any case, check out CAElinux. It's going to be the least hassle out of any of your choices because everything comes precompiled.

  3. Try XFOIL... leave CFD for later by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    As an aerospace engineering PhD, I can tell you that CFD with mesh generation, turbulence model selection, numerical method selection, etc. is definitely above the level of your typical 11th grade student, even a gifted one. At best, you could have them run OpenFOAM tutorial cases, though it is highly doubtful that they would understand what is actually going on and would be able to say little more than "I've run a CFD code before, but I don't know what the results mean" at the end of the experience. There are number of panel-based aerodynamic analysis tools that would be appropriate, and of them, I'd say XFOIL is your best bet.

    1. Re:Try XFOIL... leave CFD for later by sirrunsalot · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is the best advice you'll find here. I love CFD and I think any high school student could understand a good share of the basic physical concepts, but when you put it all together there's simply too much going on to yield much insight for all of the setup involved. If all you want is geometry in and pretty pictures out, then people have already listed a number of excellent packages, but spare the kids the details. A panel method is a good alternative, but be careful nonetheless.

  4. Learning vs Exposure by pavon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just because they don't have the mathematical background to fully understand the models, doesn't mean that it is worthless to expose them to the concepts. Playing around with flow simulations and seeing how changes in geometry affect flow is fun, and can give them a feel for the basic concepts of aerodynamics. It will make the class more interesting, and encourage them to pursue physics or engineering as a career.

    1. Re:Learning vs Exposure by squizzar · · Score: 2, Informative

      We did this in physics with a feather and a penny. Teacher had a big tall glass tube and a vacuum pump. I can't actually remember how they 'dropped' the items (I've dreamt up a system with a rod through a bung in the end of the tube, with the feather/penny stuck on the end by a small piece of blu-tack or similar, when you pull the rod up it knocks the item free from the end of the rod), but basically what you saw was the feather drop at the same speed as the penny (give everyone a stopwatch). Shows the aerodynamics, and demonstrates the way that gravity accelerates everything at the same rate, regardless of weight or density.

  5. Re:Too Complicated by TheKidWho · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sorry, but trying to understand the results of a CFD simulation require a solid understanding of fluid mechanics and an understanding of shear stress, which in turn requires a solid understanding of calculus and differential equations.

  6. JavaFoil by louks · · Score: 3, Informative

    Basically, this is similar to XFoil, which is the standard 2-D CFD software for beginning Aeronautical Engineers (after they made us write our own...in FORTRAN77).

    Since it is not 3-D, it runs MUCH faster and lets them discover the basics of pressure over an airfoil, which is the important part of wing design. The details of taper, sweep, tip shape, twist, and such are a bit too much for a high-school project. Surface area and aspect ratio are the simplest and most important criteria for airplane design. These values can be calculated on paper after coefficients of lift and drag are generated.

    Javafoil can be run stand-alone or in an applet. It's free, and fairly straightforward to use.

    Best of luck. I'd be interested to hear how quickly they catch on to the concepts.

    http://www.mh-aerotools.de/airfoils/javafoil.htm

  7. CFD or Load Analysis? by riboch · · Score: 2, Informative

    Are you looking for real CFD software for pressure distributions or are you looking for something that returns lift, drag, side and moments?

    On the CFD side: OpenFOAM. Learning this is quite a bit of work because you need to work with meshing, boundary conditions, etc. But I would be very surprised you really want flow visualisation.

    For loads: XFOIL or AVL (Athena Vortex Lattice, http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/avl/). AVL allows 3D visualisation of loads, perturbations, etc. When it comes to a first iteration in aeroplane design this is first thing we use in academia and is quite nice. XFOIL is 2D and is used for analysis on an aerofoil. Both allow arbitrary geometries, but I believe both are strictly for inviscid flows.

    What theories in particular are you trying to validate?

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    GO BLUE!
  8. Here are two great CFD packages for airfoil sim by vincentbetro · · Score: 5, Informative

    I will be getting my PhD in Computational Engineering in August, and as a former university, high school and middle school math teacher, there are things that can be applied to teaching young students about CFD without them having all the mathematics background they need. I am the STEM outreach coordinator at the SimCenter, and I have a website http://www2.utc.edu/ which includes an Euler solver on a NACA 0012 airfoil with changeable parameters for students to study the various solutions based on mach, angle of attack, etc. It also does grid adaptation. There is a graduate student tutorial and a high school student activity. I have used it with precalc, calc, and physics students at local high schools. Please feel free to contact me at vincent-betro@utc.edu for anything else I can help with. Vince P.S. Another good (and longer running) package can be obtained from NASA Lewis and can be run on any platform: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil2.html. Good luck!