FEATool 1.8 Released with OpenFOAM MATLAB CFD Solver and GUI Interface
The FEATool Multiphysics PDE and FEM Simulation Toolbox version 1.8 is now available for MATLAB and GNU Octave, featuring the following improvements and new additions.
OpenFOAM® CFD Solver Integration
In addition to being a fully integrated FEA multiphysics toolbox, and interfacing with the FEniCS FEM solver and external mesh generators such as DistMesh, GiD, Gmsh, and Triangle, the major new feature of FEATool 1.8 is a fully integrated and cross-platform OpenFOAM CFD Solver GUI interface for MATLAB and GNU Octave.
The new MATLAB CFD interface for the popular OpenFOAM CFD solver now allows users to conveniently model both laminar and fully turbulent incompressible Navier-Stokes CFD problems all within an easy to use graphical user interface (GUI). The integrated FEATool-OpenFOAM interface features
- Built-In geometry and CAD tools (with optional STL CAD geometry file import)
- Automatic mesh generation (with automatic 2D to 3D mesh conversion and extrusion for 2D problems)
- FEATool Multiphysics to OpenFOAM case file conversion
- OpenFOAM solver selection and settings, as well as control dictionary file editor
- OpenFOAM to MATLAB and FEATool solution interpolation and import
- CFD Postprocessing and visualization
As with all the FEATool MATLAB GUI functionality, models can also be saved and exported as m-file CLI functions whereby custom scripting and support for all MATLAB and Octave functions and toolboxes is supported.
With the added support for the popular OpenFOAM CFD solver and FEniCS, high-performance multiphysics, multi-simulation, and CFD modeling can now be all be conveniently done within an easy to use and self contained software interface.
New Geometry and CAD Engine
FEATool 1.8 features a new and improved CAD and geometry engine completely written in the MATLAB m-script language for maximum efficiency and portability. The new CAD engine significantly improves performance and accuracy, especially with respect to treatment of 3D geometries. Moreover, both 2D (planar) and 3D STL CAD file import is now also fully supported, allowing for more complex geometries to be modeled in FEATool Multiphysics.
Additional New Features
- Cleaned up and consistent grid generation interfaces (with identical boundary and subdomain numbering)
- Cached and vectorized equation and expression parsing for more efficient and faster general expression evaluations
- Rewritten nonlinear Newton assembly and solver framework with automatic numeric Jacobian assembly calculation with support for topology optimization
- General fixes and user interface (UI) improvements
OPENFOAM® is a registered trade mark of OpenCFD Limited, producer and distributor of the OpenFOAM software via www.openfoam.com.
Originally published at www.featool.com on May 17, 2018.
