OSCCAR

Introduction

OSCCAR is an suite of open source tools geared towards setting up, running and post-processing CFD simulations for industrial applications. OSCCAR builds on OpenFOAM®[1] and uses other open source tools as well. The OSCCAR package includes tools, solvers, tutorials and documentation developed in conjunction with an up-to-date code base of OpenFOAM. Ongoing contributions from the Department of Particulate Flow Modelling (PFM) at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, are added regularly. In addition, contributions from our academic and industrial partners are included in OSCCAR.

Please note that this project is work in progress. Any comments, ideas and suggestions are very welcome. Please contact me at gijsbert.wierink (at) jku.at.

Getting and installing OSCCAR

Prerequisites

Most of the people involved use Ubuntu linux. Therefore, this package is primarily set up for Ubuntu 12.04. OSCCAR can be compiled on any linux system, but if you need help and/or have requests, please let us know. To be able to get started a few dependencies are needed to compile OpenFOAM. These dependencies are the same as mentioned on the OpenFOAM website plus octave and doxygen:

sudo apt-get install \
    git build-essential flex bison cmake zlib1g-dev qt4-dev-tools libqt4-dev \
    gnuplot libreadline-dev libncurses-dev libxt-dev libscotch-dev libopenmpi-dev \
    libcgal-dev octave3.2 doxygen

To compile OpenFOAM-2.3.x it is useful to install gcc-4.8. Of course you can compile gcc-4.8 or clang yourself, but for the less adventurous among us, you can also install it via a backport:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gcc-4.8
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.8 50

Pull the code and set up the environment

OSCCAR can be downloaded using git (a recent version of git is advisable). A default clone of the project stores the code in a directory named "OSCCAR" in the directory you issue the clone command from. OSCCAR assumes you have a directory in your home directory named "OSCCAR", where the package will be located. To get OSCCAR, simply do:

# Make sure you are in your home directory
cd

# Pull OSCCAR (do this in $HOME/OSCCAR)
git clone https://github.com/OSCCAR-PFM/OSCCAR.git

Of course you can change all this, this is vanilla installation.

Now make sure your shell knows about OSCCAR and its environment variables by sourcing the OSCCAR environment. To do this, open up your bash startup file:

# Open .bashrc (note the dot before the file name!)
gedit ~/.bashrc

add the following line:

source $HOME/OSCCAR/OSCCAR/etc/bashrc

... and save and close the file.

To use the OSCCAR environment you need to make the shell reread ~/.bashrc again by either typing

source ~/.bashrc

... or closing the terminal and opening a new terminal.

Compile OpenFOAM and OSCCAR

Now the environment has been set up OpenFOAM and OSCCAR can be compiled. Either change to the OSCCAR directory "by hand":

cd ~/OSCCAR

or use the OSCCAR alias:

osccar

In the OSCCAR-PFM directory there is a build file named Allwmake, after OpenFOAM's build scripts. Start the build by executing the Allwmake script:

./Allwmake

Compiling in parallel

If you have multiple cores available compiling will be faster on more than a single core. You can set up the environment for parallel compiling by setting OpenFOAM's variable WM_NCOMPPROCS to the number of cores you have available. For example, in case of a four core machine, open up your ~/.bashrc and export WM_NCOMPPROCS:

# Open your bash startup file
gedit ~/.bashrc

... and add the following:

export WM_NCOMPPROCS=4

Note that after this change you need to re-source ~/.bashrc or open a new terminal for the environment variable to take effect.

Using OSCCAR

The OpenFOAM and OSCCAR executables can be run anywhere on your system, as long as the current directory is a valid case directory. However, to keep things nice and tidy it is recommendable to follow OpenFOAM's directory structure and run cases in the run directory of your installation. After successful compilation do:

mkdir -p $OSCCAR_RUN

After this you can change to the run directory by typing:

run

OSCCAR and OpenFOAM contain more aliases that can be useful for a smooth workflow. The aliases and associated environment variables are listed below.

OSCCAR aliases

Alias	Function	Environment variable
otut	Change directory to OSCCAR tutorials	OSCCAR_TUTORIALS
osrc	Change directory to OSCCAR source	OSCCAR_SRC
osol	Change directory to OSCCAR solvers	OSCCAR_SOLVERS
outil	Change directory to OSCCAR utilities	OSCCAR_UTILITIES
odoc	Change directory to OSCCAR documentation	OSCCAR_DOC
osccar	Change directory to OSCCAR installation directory	OSCCAR_DIR
ouser	Change directory to OSCCAR user directory	OSCCAR_USER
run	Change directory to run directory in the OSCCAR user directory	OSCCAR_RUN
osccartut	Same as otut	OSCCAR_TUTORIALS
osccarsrc	Same as osrc	OSCCAR_SRC
osccarsol	Same as osol	OSCCAR_SOLVERS
osccarutil	Same as outil	OSCCAR_UTILITIES
osccardoc	Same as odoc	OSCCAR_DOC

OpenFOAM aliases

Alias	Function	Environment variable
tut	Change directory to OpenFOAM tutorials	FOAM_TUTORIALS
src	Change directory to OpenFOAM source	FOAM_SRC
sol	Change directory to OpenFOAM solvers	FOAM_SOLVERS
util	Change directory to OpenFOAM utilities	FOAM_UTILITIES
run	Change directory to the OpenFOAM user run directory. Defaults to OSCCAR run directory.	FOAM_RUN

Disclaimer

[1] This offering is not approved or endorsed by OpenCFD Limited, the producer of the OpenFOAM software and owner of the OPENFOAM® and OpenCFD® trade marks.