Introduction to OpenFOAM 17 March 2025

This course aims at MSc/PhD students and industry staff members who like to get familiar with OpenFOAM for fluid dynamics applications. The course is intended for beginners with no previous experience in OpenFOAM, however, the following entry-level skills are expected:

• Basic fluid mechanics concepts (e.g. Navier–Stokes equations, Reynolds and Mach numbers, boundary layer, turbulent flows)
• Basic knowledge of CFD (e.g. finite volume method, discretization error, stability, convergence)
• Basic knowledge of Linux terminal

Study goals:

After the course participants can:

• Identify available solvers for different application fields
• Recognize basic code structure
• Generate unstructured and structured meshes (blockMesh/SnappyHexMesh)
• Set up and run basic CFD simulations  
• Visualize results (Paraview)
• Adapt existing tutorials for advanced applications.

Education method:

Presentations followed by tutorials. The course will be organized on campus.

09:00 - 09:30 Arrival with coffee and tea

09:30 - 09:45 Introduction available solvers in OpenFOAM and application range

09:45 - 10:30 Tutorial I

10:30 - 10:45 Coffee break

10:45 - 12:30 Tutorial II & III

12:30 - 13:15 Lunch

13:15 - 14:15 Tutorial IV

14:15 - 14:30 Coffee break

14:30 - 15:30 Advanced case study by Dynaflow research group starting with an existing tutorial

15:30 - 17:00 Work on own application or continue with tutorials