OpenFOAM vs ANSYS CFX

Source: CFD Direct

OpenFOAM is the free, open source CFD software developed primarily by OpenCFD Ltd since 2004. It has a large user base across most areas of engineering and science, from both commercial and academic organisations. OpenFOAM has an extensive range of features to solve anything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions, turbulence and heat transfer, to acoustics, solid mechanics and electromagnetics.

OpenFOAM is professionally released every six months to include customer sponsored developments and contributions from the community. It is independently tested by ESI-OpenCFD’s Application Specialists, Development Partners and selected customers, and supported by ESI’s worldwide infrastructure, values and commitment.

Quality assurance is based on rigorous testing. The process of code evaluation, verification and validation includes several hundred daily unit tests, a medium-sized test battery run on a weekly basis, and large industry-based test battery run prior to new version releases. Tests are designed to assess regression behaviour, memory usage, code performance and scalability.

OpenFOAM releases are scheduled every six months in June and December.

In this tutorial we make a comparison between OpenFOAM and ANsys CFX considering an identical mesh for a free surface multiphase flow simulation.