Solvers

Panel Methods

XFOIL

  • Release Type: open-source
  • Description: XFOIL is an interactive program for the design and analysis of subsonic isolated airfoils.
  • System: Linux, Windows and Mac
  • Tutorial / Manual

MSES

  • Release Type: Commercial
  • Description: The MSES system is a collection of programs for the analysis and design of single- or multi-element airfoils.
  • System: Linux and Windows
  • Tutorial / Manual

MISES

  • Release Type: Commercial
  • Description: The MISES system is a collection of programs for cascade analysis and design.
  • System: Linux and Windows
  • Tutorial / Manual

MTFLOW

  • Release Type: Commercial
  • Description: The MTFLOW (Multielement Through-FLOW) system is a collection of programs for the analysis and design of single- or multi-element axisymmetric bodies and ducts.
  • System: Linux and Windows
  • Tutorial / Manual 1
  • Tutorial / Manual 2

AVL

  • Release Type: open-source
  • Description: AVL is a program for the aerodynamic and flight-dynamic analysis of rigid aircraft of arbitrary configuration. It employs an extended vortex lattice model for the lifting surfaces, together with a slender-body model for fuselages and nacelles.
  • System: Linux and Windows

XFLR5

  • Release Type: open-source
  • Description: XFLR5 is an analysis tool for airfoils, wings, and planes operating at low Reynolds Numbers.
  • System: Windows

ASWING

  • Release Type: Commercial
  • Description: ASWING is a software program for the aerodynamic, structural, and control-response analysis of aircraft with flexible wings and fuselages of high to moderate aspect ratio.
  • System: Linux and Windows
  • Tutorial / Manual

Tornado

  • Release Type: open-source
  • Description: Tornado is a Vortex Lattice Method for linear aerodynamic wing design applications in conceptual aircraft design or in aeronautical education.
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac
  • Documentation
  • Tutorials

Full Potential Methods

flow5

  • Release Type: Commercial
  • Description: Potential flow solver with built-in pre- and post processing functionalities. Its purpose is to make preliminary designs of wings, planes and sails reliable, fast and user-friendly.
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac
  • Documentation

BLWF58

PANAIR

  • Release Type: Opensource
  • Description: PANAIR (an abbreviation for “panel aerodynamics”) is a state-of-the-art computer program developed to predict inviscid subsonic and supersonic flows about an arbitrary configuration by means of a higher-order panel method.
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac
  • Tutorial / Manual

Euler Solvers

Cart3D

  • Release Type: available for US federal employees only
  • Description: Cart3D is a high-fidelity inviscid analysis package using cartesian grids for conceptual and preliminary aerodynamic design. It allows users to perform automated CFD analysis on complex geometry and supports steady and time-dependent simulations. The package features fully-integrated adjoint-driven mesh adaptation and also includes utilities for geometry import, surface modeling and intersection, mesh generation, and post-processing of results. The main flow solvers run in parallel using either shared memory (OpenMP) or distributed memory (MPI) with excellent scalability. The package is highly automated so that geometry acquisition, and mesh generation can usually be performed within a few minutes on most current desktop computers. Geometry enters into Cart3D in the form of surface triangulations. These may be generated from within a CAD packages, from legacy surface triangulations or from structured surface grids. Cart3D uses adaptively refined Cartesian grids to discretize the space around a geometry and cuts the geometry out of the set of “cut-cells” which actually intersect the surface triangulation. Meshes automatically refine as simulations evolve to reduce error in aerodynamic outputs. Flow solvers run in parallel and to take full advantage of multi-core and multi-cpu hardware.
  • System: Linux, Windows and Mac
  • Documentation
  • Quick Reference / Command List
  • Tutorial / Manual

RANS Solvers

OpenFOAM

  • Release Type: open-source
  • Description: [Wikipedia] OpenFOAM is a C++ toolbox for the development of customized numerical solvers, and pre-/post-processing utilities for the solution of continuum mechanics problems, most prominently including computational fluid dynamics.
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac
  • Documentation
  • Tutorial / Manual

SU2

  • Release Type: open-source
  • Description: [Wikipedia] SU2 is a suite of open-source software tools written in C++ for the numerical solution of partial differential equations (PDE) and performing PDE-constrained optimization. The primary applications are computational fluid dynamics and aerodynamic shape optimization, but has been extended to treat more general equations such as electrodynamics and chemically reacting flows. SU2 supports continuous and discrete adjoint for calculating the sensitivities/gradients of a scalar field.
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac
  • Documentation
  • Tutorial / Manual

TLNS3D

  • Release Type: open-source
  • Description: This software was developed to solve Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes Equations to simulate turbulent, viscous flows over three-dimensional configurations. A general multiblock grid is used to model complex configurations. A multi-stage Runge-Kutta pseudo-time stepping scheme is coupled with residual smoothing and multigrid acceleration techniques to form an efficient algorithm.
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac

CFL3D

Ansys CFX

  • Release Type: commercial
  • Description:
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac

Ansys Fluent

  • Release Type: commercial
  • Description:
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac

Metacomp CFD++

  • Release Type: commercial
  • Description:
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac

STAR-CCM+

  • Release Type: commercial
  • Description:
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac

ONERA ELSA

  • Release Type: commercial
  • Description:
  • System: Linux, Windows, and Mac

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