OSCAE Workflow & Tools

At OSCAE.Initiative, we are working on several projects to bring Open Source software into the mainstream of CAE workflow. It involves replacing some of the popular commercial CAE combinations with equivalent Open Source alternatives.

For instance, the commercial CFD workflow of

would be replaced with the equivalent open source software workflow of, say

or

Other workflow combinations may be constructed from these matrices of Open Source Software for CAE.

Almost all CAE tools used in OSCAE.Initiative projects run entirely on Linux-based computing hardware and short courses are conducted for the uninitiated. Users already familiar with Windows will be introduced to virtual network computing protocol to seamlessly hook up their Windows PC to the OSCAE tools running on Linux platform in a transparent cross-platform environment.

If you are into exploring and hacking the fertile jungle of OSCAE for its rich engineering opportunities, this could well be your first step.

We list here a collection of links to many popular OSCAE tools or software packages which are loosely split into several CAE groups. The classification of these groups is more or less related to their percieved functions in a typical CAE workflow.

Documentation in the forms of guides, manuals, tutorial, workshop or conference papers for the packages, either made available by the software authors themselves or written by independent users, are easily available by Google'ing on the Net.

•   Software Development Kits
  GNU SDK | g95 | f2c | Code::Blocks | Geany | Eclipse | Dislin | Netlib

•   CAD & Geometric Modellers
  FreeCAD | QCAD | LibreCAD | gCAD3D

•   Structural Finite Element Analysis (FEA) Solvers
  Salome MECA/Code_Aster | Netgen/NGSolve | FreeFEM | Elmer | z88 Aurora

•   Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Solvers
  OpenFOAM | Code_Saturne | Dolfyn/Orka

•   Pre- & Post-processors
  Salome | gmsh | Netgen/NGSolve | MeshLab | TetGen | ParaView | VisIt

•   Stats, Data Analysis & Graph Plotting/Visualization
  R | PSPP | GNUplot | Veusz | SciDAVis | LabPlot | Graphviz

•   Numerical Computing
  GNU Octave | Scilab | Maxima

•   Visualization, Graphic Rendering & Animation
  Blender | Aqsis
  
  
  

  Some of Our Areas of Interest

  We use the OSCAE tools to study several areas of interest.

  1.   Ship Hull Design Optimization

     There are 50+ ship hull models which have been model-tested at the Marine Technology Centre (MTC) over the last two decades. MTC is now pursuing an effort to put these models through CFD analysis using free and open source CFD tools before using the model-testing experimental results to validate the CFD analysis. In parallel to this OSCAE workflow study, similar CFD analysis will be put through the commercial codes (Pointwise/Gambit and Fluent). By the end of this exercise, each hull will have three sets of results

     • model testing
     • Open source CFD (gmsh + OpenFOAM + ParaView) analysis
     • Commercial CFD (Pointwise/Gambit + Fluent) analysis

     Whom to contact:

     1.   2.   3.   4.

     Mr. Nasrudin Ismail   Ms. Ummu Saiyidah Najihah   Mr. Ahmad Fuaad Ahmad Sabki   Dr. Abu Hasan Abdullah

     UTM   UTM   UniKL   TwoPi

     
     
     
  2.   Passive Shipping Container Home

     We are starting an exploratory research on passive cooling issues while planning and designing shipping container home. Computer models to study effects of solar path, wing walls, thermal chimney and others will be simulated using the following FOSS for CAE workflow combinations:

     gmsh

     ---->

     OpenFOAM

     ---->

     ParaView

     Salome

     ---->

     Code_Saturne

     ---->

     Salome

     Whom to contact:

     1.   2.

     Dr. Abu Hasan Abdullah   Dr. Mohd Hazmil Syahidy

     TwoPi   TwoPi

     
     
     
  3.   Flow Instabilities

     There have been many studies done using the commercial codes but this time around we'll be looking at using the

     gmsh

     ---->

     OpenFOAM

     ---->

     ParaView

     workflow to do numerical studies of

     • Kelvin's ship wave pattern
     • von Karman vortex street
     • cloud dynamics

     Whom to contact:

     1.   2.   3.

     Dr. Abu Hasan Abdullah   Ms. Ummu Saiyidah Najihah   Dr. Mohd Hazmil Syahidy

     TwoPi   UTM   TwoPi

     
     
     
  4.   Mesh Generation for Fluid Flow Analyses
     • Automatic 2-D mesh generation of centrifugal pump blade passage passage boundary-fitted coordinate system.
     • Automatic 2-D mesh generation of centrifugal pump blade passage triangular coordinate system.
     • Calculating the internal flows in centrifugal pump using Octave/Scilab.
     • Structured mesh generation of a cambered 4-digit NACA airfoil for 2-D finite difference flow analysis.
     • Structured mesh generation of a symmetrical 4-digit NACA airfoil for2-D finite difference flow analysis.

     Whom to contact:

     1.   2.

     Dr. Abu Hasan Abdullah   Dr. Mohd Hazmil Syahidy

     TwoPi   TwoPi