Suite-CFD: An Array of Fluid Solvers Written in MATLAB and Python

Abstract

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models are being rapidly integrated into applications across all sciences and engineering. CFD harnesses the power of computers to solve the equations of fluid dynamics, which otherwise cannot be solved analytically except for very particular cases. Numerical solutions can be interpreted through traditional quantitative techniques as well as visually through qualitative snapshots of the flow data. As pictures are worth a thousand words, in many cases such visualizations are invaluable for understanding the fluid system. Unfortunately, vast mathematical knowledge is required to develop one’s own CFD software and commercial software options are expensive and thereby may be inaccessible to many potential practitioners. To that extent, CFD materials specifically designed for undergraduate education are limited. Here we provide an open-source repository, which contains numerous popular fluid solvers in 2 D (projection, spectral, and Lattice Boltzmann), with full implementations in both MATLAB and Python3. All output data is saved in the . v t k format, which can be visualized (and analyzed) with open-source visualization tools, such as VisIt or ParaView. Beyond the code, we also provide teaching resources, such as tutorials, flow snapshots, measurements, videos, and slides to streamline use of the software.

Keywords

• fluid dynamics education
• applied mathematics education
• computational fluid dynamics
• fluids visualization
• open-source cfd
• projection method
• spectral fluid solver
• lattice boltzmann method
• cavity flow
• circular flow
• interacting vortices
• flow past cylinder
• flow past porous cylinder
• matlab
• python