Development of a Parallel Overset Grid Framework for Moving Body Simulations in OpenFOAM

Abstract

OpenFOAM is an industry-standard Open-Source fluid dynamics code that is used to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for a variety of flow situations. It is currently being used extensively by researchers to study a plethora of physical problems ranging from fundamental fluid dynamics to complex multiphase flows. When it comes to modeling the flow surrounding moving bodies that involve large displacements such as that of ocean risers, sinking of a ship, or the free-flight of an insect, it is cumbersome to utilize a single computational grid and move the body of interest. In this work, we discuss a high-fidelity approach based on overset or overlapping grids which overcomes the necessity of using a single computational grid. The overset library is parallelized using the Message Passing Interface (MPI) and Pthreads and is linked dynamically to OpenFOAM. Computational results are presented to demonstrate the potential of this method for simulating problems with large displacements.