Improvement to numerical schemes in Caelus

Dr. Darrin Stephens

Dr. Chris Sideroff
Prof. Aleksandar Jemcov
 What is Caelus?
• Caelus was forked from OpenFOAM
• Free and open: www.caelus-cml.com
• Supports multiple platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac)
• Robust compilation (Scons: www.scons.org)
• Easy to install
4.10

• Verified and validated turbulence models (conforms to most commonly

used variants published in open literature)
• Documentation and validation cases
• Improving algorithmic robustness on non-”perfect” meshes
• Multi-dimensional interpolation
5.04

• Improved accuracy on non-”perfect” meshes

• Non-orthogonal boundary correction
• Swak, Python wrapping, etc
• New wall functions, new compressible solvers, more numerical
5.10

improvements
 What is Caelus? cont’d
• Restructuring of interpolation schemes
• Overhaul of limiters to ensure TVD compliance
6.04

• Updates to pressure and density-based compressible solvers

• New combustion solvers
• New RAS, DES and VLES turbulence models
6.10

• Performance and stability enhancements to linear solvers

• Addition of cfMesh
• New multiphase solvers and algorithm improvements
7.04

• New gradient discretisation schemes

• Multiple rigid body dynamics (nDoF) and mesh motion capabilities
• Virtual Blade Model for high fidelity rotorcraft modelling
 What is Caelus? cont’d

Documentation and validation

cases

Easy installation with minimal

dependencies (Python and MPI)
 Numerical Issues

• Robustness and Accuracy

• Sensitivity to mesh quality widely reported for OpenFOAM
• Two main metrics used to quantify “quality”
• Skewness
• Non-orthogonality
• Skewness tends to affect face interpolation, i.e. convective terms
• Non-orthogonality tends affect gradient reconstruction, i.e. diffusion terms
• Gradient accuracy
• Speed
• Time per unit of work (e.g. iteration)
• Improvements to linear solvers
• Time to certain level of accuracy
• Improvements to discretisation
 Interpolation improvements

• Central-based schemes (linear, limitedLinear) are one dimensional –

very susceptible to skewness.

• Include gradient to get better than 1st order accuracy

𝜕𝜕𝜕𝜕
𝜑𝜑𝑓𝑓 = 𝜑𝜑𝑐𝑐 + 𝜓𝜓(𝑥𝑥𝑓𝑓̅ − 𝑥𝑥̅𝑐𝑐 )
𝜕𝜕𝑥𝑥̅
 Interpolation improvements cont’d

• OpenFOAM
• Does not limit the slope
• Attempts to limit the fluxes
• Introduce commonly used slope limiters that adhere to the TVD
condition

Source: M. Berger, M.J. Aftosmis and S.M. Murman, 43rd AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting
 Interpolation improvements cont’d

• 9 new interpolation schemes

• Barth-Jespersen: linearUpwindBJ
• Monotonic central: linearUpwindMC
• Differential limiter: linearUpwindDL
• Koren limiter: linearUpwindKoren
• MG: linearUpwindMG
• Minmod: linearUpwindMinmod
• UMIST: linearUpwindUMIST
• VanAlbada: linearUpwindVanAlbada
• VanLeer: linearUpwindVanLeer

• 2 new Multidimensional limited schemes

• linearUwindMDBJ
• linearUpwindMDDL
 Interpolation improvement cont’d

• 3 implementations
• Fully implicit
• Deferred correction
• Stabilised
• Deferred correction used for more difficult meshes
• Controlled with dictionary:
div(phi,U) deferredCorrection Gauss dcLinearUpwindBJV grad(U) 0.5
• 0.5 explicit relaxation factor that multiplies the explicit (high order) part
of the discretization (0 – 1)
 Interpolation improvement cont’d

• Advecting step

Tobias Holzmann, http://www.holzmann-cfd.de/index.php/en/numerical-schemes

Interpolation improvement cont’d
Interpolation improvement cont’d
Interpolation improvement cont’d
Interpolation improvement cont’d
 Interpolation improvement cont’d

• Motorbike tutorial
 Non-orthogonal Correction

• OpenFOAM shows 1st order accuracy near boundaries

• Talks from 8th and 9th OFWS (H. Noriega and F. Guibault)
• Only when grid is non-orthogonal near boundaries
• Almost always
• No correction applied for all patch types except processor and coupled
• OpenFOAM 5.x and foam-extend 4.x

...
forAll(corrVecs.boundaryField(), patchi)
{
fvsPatchVectorField& patchCorrVecs =
corrVecs.boundaryField()[patchi];

if (!patchCorrVecs.coupled())
{
patchCorrVecs = vector::zero;
}
else
{
...
 Non-orthogonal Correction cont’d

• Method of manufactured solutions – fixed value b.c’s

Caelus 4.10 (OpenFOAM, OpenFOAM+, foam-extend)

 Non-orthogonal Correction cont’d

• Method of manufactured solutions – fixed value b.c’s

Caelus 5.04 and above

 Non-orthogonal Correction cont’d

• Method of manufactured solutions – fixed gradient b.c’s

Caelus 4.10 (OpenFOAM, OpenFOAM+, foam-extend)

 Non-orthogonal Correction cont’d

• Method of manufactured solutions – fixed gradient b.c’s

Caelus 5.04 and above

 Gradient accuracy

• Nodal-averaged Gauss gradient scheme.

• Slice through a sphere showing the gradient of volume fraction.

Nodal-average
Gauss
Gauss

LSQ
LSQ
extended stencil
 Gradient accuracy cont’d

• Testing of solvers using manufactured solutions highlighted an issue

with LSQ gradients at boundaries on unstructured meshes.

Caelus 7.04
 Speed

• Improvements from discretisation already covered

• Improvements to linear solvers
• All solvers reviewed and modified to conform with published algorithms
• Modifications for improved stability and robustness
• Modification to overall control (e.g. min iterations)
• Removal of legacy code and non-standard algorithms
• Addition of BiCGStab from Foundation version with modifications
• New smoothers and pre-conditioners
• Specifically designed for large parallel simulations
• Shown to give 30% improvement in simulation run time over previous Caelus
versions.
• On stiff problems demonstrated superior performance compared with
OpenFOAM.
 Putting it all together

• All of the incremental improvements in the numerical schemes in

Caelus have resulted in a very fast, accurate, and robust CFD tool.
• Example from our recent paper “Verification and Validation of the
Caelus library – Incompressible Turbulence Models” presented at
ASME Fluid Division Summer meeting, July 31st – August 3rd.

Mesh stats:
• Max. Aspect ratio – 5478
• Max. Orthogonality angle – 89.98°
• Avg. Orthogonality angle – 62.24°
• Min. Included angle – 0.0076°
Putting it all together cont’d
 Questions

Applied CCM Pty Ltd Applied CCM Canada

Dr Darrin Stephens Dr Chris Sideroff

Phone: 03 8376 6962 Phone: 613 276 7472

Email: d.stephens@appliedccm.com.au Email: c.sideroff@appliedccm.ca
Web: www.appliedccm.com.au Web: www.appliedccm.ca

www.caelus-cml.com
 About Applied CCM

• Specialise in the application, support and development of OpenFOAM-

based computational mechanics
• Main developers of Caelus
• People
• Darrin Stephens, Chris Sideroff and Aleks Jemcov
• Locations
• Australia, Canada and USA
• Engage with customers as their technology partner