ESI Group announces the second worldwide conference for users of OpenFOAM; free, open source CFD software developed by ESI-OpenCFD, licensed and distributed by the OpenFOAM Foundation. OpenFOAM is the most popular open-source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code, widely used in the academic world and in industry. OpenFOAM owes its success to its extensive range of features that enable users to address anything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions with turbulence and heat transfer, to solid dynamics and electromagnetics.
OpenFOAM addresses a very diverse community, ranging from academic institutions, where it is used in teaching a research, to commercial organizations. Today, large companies are implementing the code on an industrial scale for applications in automotive, chemical, marine, energy and heavy industry sectors.
Given such a large and growing community, it’s no surprise the first OpenFOAM conference, held last year in Frankfurt, gathered over 250 participants coming from all around the world. The 2014 OpenFOAM conference will once again provide the perfect opportunity for the global community of OpenFOAM users to hear from industry leaders and to interact with other users, OpenFOAM developers, the support and training teams from ESI-OpenCFD and the OpenFOAM Foundation.
The second OpenFOAM User Conference will take place at the Steigenberger Hotel Am Kanzleramt, in Berlin, Germany, on October 7-9, 2014. During the first two days, participants will be able to learn about new developments and interesting projects in OpenFOAM, including the new user interface provided in the latest release ESI’s Visual-Environment software. Building on the success of last years’ workshop, the OpenFOAM Development and Training team will hold a session named “Lessons in OpenFOAM” on the third day.
During the plenary session on the first day, ESI will have the honor of welcoming keynote speaker Dr. Sundermeier, Head of the Department for CAE Methods at Volkswagen AG(Germany). A second keynote speech will be delivered by Dr. Bizhan Befrui from Delphi Powertrain Systems (Luxembourg), who will present a study on the topic of "Progress in Large Eddy Simulation of the Liquid Jet Primary Atomization". Dr. Louis Gritzo, vice president, manager of research, at FM Global (USA), one of the world’s largest commercial and industrial property insurers, will deliver the third keynote speech. He will discuss the use of OpenFOAM for performing risk assessment and loss prevention solutions in areas such as natural hazards and industrial fires.
On the second day, many industrial and academic users will present recent case studies using OpenFOAM. These will include AREVA GmbH, Artelia, BASF GmbH, CFD Software Entwicklung- und Forschungsgeselleschaft mbH, enGits, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Fraunhofer IWM, the German Aerospace Center, Lloyd's Register Consulting - Energy AS, MAHLE Behr GmbH & Co. KG, RWTH Aachen, TATA Steel, Volkswagen AG, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Johannes Kepler University, Politecnico di Milano, AeroTex UK and Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf.
An important differentiator of OpenFOAM over other CFD solutions is its price. OpenFOAM is (and will remain) free software, which partly explains its rapid and wide adoption. Also, since it is open-source, OpenFOAM offers users complete freedom to customize and extend its existing functionality to fit specific needs. Everything is open for public verification and scrutiny, ensuring constant user feedback to OpenFOAM developers so they can deliver highly robust and efficient code.
In a recent interview for ESI’s magazine ESItalk, Dr. Sundermeier, Volkswagen AG, confirmed the growing use of the open-source solution across his company: “Today, in the Volkswagen world, OpenFOAM is used as a predesign tool for exterior aerodynamics, and as a design tool for example in lab design, or in some cases for interior CFD computation. In the future, I expect OpenFOAM to be the tool for the whole exterior aerodynamics design process.”
To learn more about this event, and to see the complete event agenda, please visit www.esi-group.com/OpenFOAM2014
