Free Surface Flow Modeling with Open Source Software
Status Quo:
Multidimensional numerical modeling of free surface flows undergoes major changes. Almost every university or major company developed their own source code until only few years ago. But in the last years, more and more companies joined forces and change their software policies towards open source. What is the benefit, if there are no license fees coming in? The reasons are manifold:
Unlike to universally useful office software with millions of users, CFD software normally is used for non standard applications. Almost no project is exactly calculated twice and the number of users is limited to only a few thousands. Therefore, an universal software package can neither be developed nor could a high number of features be paid by only one developing organisation.
One benefit of Open Source Software is, that any feature can be extended to anybodies needs, even if nobody thought about this application before.
Provided that one understands the structure of the software.
A second very important benefit of Open Source Software (in comparison to closed source „Black Box“ software) is the need of planers for transparency and acceptance to convince both, clients and critics of river and coastal projects. If other experts have access to every formula in the source code, they can be convinced that there is no fault inside.
Acceptance and transparency prevent expensive conflicts.
However, as meanwhile so many institutions and users develop new features it is hard to keep track, and even harder to find the right access point if you start from the scratch with Linux distributions, pre- & post processing tools, software versions, mathematical methods or you even just try to find the suitable hardware.
How can you benefit? We guide you through the labyrinths of features and versions!
The theories of hydraulic modelling are taught at universities, but an engineer’s work provides many additional hurdles that have to be taken economically.
Therefore the sole motivation for our courses is to provide you the easiest possible access to a full tool chain of market leading applications. We want to show you an efficient way through a labyrinth of features, software versions and hardware setups. Avoid beginner’s mistakes, week long trial & error and don’t waste too much time configuring Linux. After the 3 day course, you will see the red line and know the ways to learn further auto-didactically.
All courses are available in English or German. Please use the following pages to find more information about the courses, and feel free to ask anything via email or telephone if the necessary information cannot be found on the english pages.