1. About CFDEMcoupling¶

CFDEMcoupling provides an open-source parallel coupled CFD-DEM framework combining the strengths of the LIGGGHTS DEM code and the open-source CFD package OpenFOAM®(*). The CFDEMcoupling toolbox allows to expand standard CFD solvers of OpenFOAM®(*) to include a coupling to the DEM code LIGGGHTS.

In this toolbox the particle representation within the CFD solver is organized by “cloud” classes. Key functionalities are organized in sub-models (e.g. force models, data exchange models, etc.) which can easily be selected and combined by dictionary settings.

The coupled solvers run fully parallel on distributed-memory clusters. Features are:

• its modular approach allows users to easily implement new models

• its MPI parallelization enables to use it for large scale problems

• the forum on CFD-DEM gives the possibility to exchange with other users / developers

• the use of Git allows to easily update to the latest version

• basic documentation is provided

The project structure:

• src directory including the source files of the coupling toolbox and models

• applications directory including the solver files for coupled CFD-DEM simulations

• doc directory including the documentation of CFDEMcoupling

• tutorials directory including basic tutorial cases showing the functionality

Details on installation are given in the Installation section. The functionality of this CFD-DEM framework is described via tutorial cases showing how to use different solvers and models.

CFDEMcoupling stands for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) - Discrete Element Method (DEM) coupling.

CFDEMcoupling is an open-source code, distributed freely under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL).

Core development of the public version of CFDEMcoupling is done by Christoph Goniva and Christoph Kloss, both at DCS Computing GmbH.

The original version of this documentation was written by Christoph Goniva, DCS Computing GmbH, 2012.