any update on the Butterfly?

may i ask if there is any update on the development of the butterfly component to connect GH to OpenFOAM for CFD simulation?

BTW, any recommendation on OpenFORM learning materials?

Much obliged!

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lyndon Johnson on October 31, 2016 at 7:29pm

Mostapha, Thank you for the fast reply

Turns out it was my workplace firewall. I have connected to an uncontrolled wireless we have and now all is well!

I will work through the instructions provided and see how we get on.

Kind Regards

Lyndon

Permalink Reply by Mostapha Sadeghipour Roudsari on October 31, 2016 at 7:36pm

For some reason the link is copied two times in my reply! Let's try again:

http://www.openfoam.com/download/install-windows.php

and if that didn't work this is the direct link:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/openfoamplus/files/v1606+/OpenCFD-...

Permalink Reply by Theodoros Galanos on October 31, 2016 at 8:01pm

Hi Lyndon,

Sorry for the late reply. As Mostapha said these are the links to download.

Concerning the differences between the two versions, if you are interested you can check this very interesting (and TLDR) post (http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/openfoam/165322-openfoam-v3-0-a.html). Especially Wyldckat's post #13 onwards goes almost over the whole history of OF development and the nuances therein.

On a production side, we hope to have BF working with the new OF4.0 very soon. Actually it should already work as is even if you installed the new version up to the running the case. Post-processing would not however. We will try and include this in the next release.

Kind regards,

Theodore.

Permalink Reply by Lyndon Johnson on October 31, 2016 at 8:15pm

Hi Theodore,

Thanks for the reply. I will download the old version for now and see how i get on.

Having done little reading on the subject so far - could you tell me if Butterfly can handle open channel fluid flow? I am looking to model an ell bypass for a dam which has a combination of open channel and pipe flow.

Do you think Butterfly would be suitable?

Regards

Lyndon

Permalink Reply by Theodoros Galanos on October 31, 2016 at 8:26pm

Hi Lyndon,

Sorry I think we are out of reply nesting.

The case you are referring to is kind of a classic case for CFD studies. It is something that has been done and validated in OpenFOAM (as far as I know) and you can even find similar examples in the OF tutorials (like the Dam case).

In that sense, yes Butterfly is able to handle that. Coupled with Rhino/GH makes BF able to provide a link to a very good 3D modelling environment and to parametric possibilities (e.g. see the effect of changing the radius of the pipe, and so on).

That said, such cases might require considerable experience in meshing, running and post-processing. It's a bit out of my expertise since I focus mainly on the built evironment. However, apart from the OF tutorials (you can find them in your OF installation folder, search for dam) there's a lot of information about all this in cfd-online.

Good luck, let us know how it goes!

Kind regards,

Theodore.

Permalink Reply by Lasse Hamborg on November 28, 2016 at 3:01pm

Hi Theodoros,

The studies and comparisons you talk about when assessing the accuracy, are they possible to get access to? Results, approaches, methods, graphs or pictures, or what ever you might have(?).

They interest me due to my ongoing master thesis on CFD and parametric simulations of the climates in atria buildings.

Regards

Lasse Hamborg: Stud. MSc Arch. Eng. - Technical Uni. of Denmark

Permalink Reply by Theodoros Galanos on November 28, 2016 at 6:10pm

Hi Lasse,

If you search on any scientific portal I believe you will find a lot on validation studies between Openfoam and other codes. I was not talking specifically about comparisons I've read but the potential of BF to assess such cases. In your search, try and be specific on what you want, cause validation can focus on codes (i.e software environments like OF and Fluent), solvers (e.g. RNG vs kEpsilon vs kOmega, etc.), meshers, and so many more. Additionally, I'm sure there's a lot of CFD studies of Atrium spaces.

Myself, I haven't been involved in any validation studies as I have always used CFD on the practical side of things. Therefore, I always trusted OF since it has been heavily validated over the years.

The beauty of BF, or at least its end goal, is that you can easily test design alternatives directly from a friendlier and possibly better-known environment of Rhino3D.

I would suggest therefore to just try things out. Design your geometry, in this case the atrium, in Rhino. Decide which are the parameters that you wish to investigate and incorporate those to a GH definition that produces different design alternatives for the range of those parameters (i.e. your parametric model). Then run the cases through BF. There's a couple of examples that come with BF and a few others users are providing either here or on github.

I'm afraid trial and error is painful with CFD but it's the best way forward. Also, I suggest you bookmark cfd-online.com and skim through everything in there. Most if not all of what we are discussing has been discussed there.

Good luck!

Kind regards,

Theodore.