Finding really good stuff on OpenFOAM can be super tricky.

And of what you find, most isn’t that helpful…

• Some are showing their age

• Some are difficult to understand / decipher

• Some are simply AI-generated slop

I went out there to gather the best, a few less-known but helpful resources you can use in addition to the information I’ve been sharing in my newsletter.

Forums

CFDOnline

An active place for many users of OpenFOAM with no question too silly! Thousands of members and one of the earliest places for CFD discussions. A great place to hang out and ask questions, with boards organised by CFD workflow (pre, solve, post etc.).

Link: https://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/openfoam/

OpenFOAM subreddit

Lively place with over 6000 active members. Most people seem to be asking for help here and they quickly get answered. Definitely worth a look!

https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenFOAM/

Presentations

engsys slides on snappyHexMesh (for meshing)

Whilst it’s a little old, it’s definitely a great resource – often cited internet-wide for a reason. Lots of good detail on snappyHexMesh still very relevant to how the meshing utility works.

Link: https://openfoamwiki.net/images/f/f0/Final-AndrewJacksonSlidesOFW7.pdf

IAEA intro to OpenFOAM

An interesting read for beginners to OpenFOAM – general notes on modelling a problem, the structure of cases and getting started. Useful.

Link: https://indico.ictp.it/event/10199/session/1/contribution/4/material/slides/0.pdf

Books

Notes on Computational Fluid Dynamics

This is basically the official book from the creators of OpenFOAM (CFD Direct). It’s well detailed, explained but can get quite math-heavy for complete beginners. Great for solver developers and those curious on the inner workings though! Available as a free download or book on Amazon.

Link: https://doc.cfd.direct/notes/cfd-general-principles/introduction

Mathematics, Numerics, Derivations and OpenFOAM

An interesting book by a passionate community contributor. Again, can be a little math-heavy for beginners but great insights to be had! This guy has customised solvers and even has a utility or two for specific physics modelling.

Link: https://holzmann-cfd.com/community/publications/mathematics-numerics-derivations-and-openfoam

Videos

József Nagy

Great set of videos with great clarity for beginners. He even made a video explaining OpenFOAM through Pizza! Fun and enjoyable to watch.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdgpuxuAxH9BqheyE82Vvw

Wolf Dynamics World

Great set of videos with a consistent quality, making watching a learning about OpenFOAM enjoyable. I learnt a great deal from here, but it did need some patience and clarifying at times.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/@wolfdynamicsCFD/videos

Websites

CFDEngine by Robin

A site with interesting posts, no longer active but useful as insights on some key OpenFOAM utilities and workings. Shame it stopped.

Link: https://cfdengine.com/newsletter/

CFD University by Tom-Robin Teschner

A great site with lots of detailed articles from a CFD solver developer! Definitely an understated resource to understanding how solvers work.

Link: https://cfd.university/blog

WolfDynamics

These guys have been around for a long time with a popular YouTube channel too. Very detailed information can be found in their resources. Just don’t get lost in all of it – use what you need depending on what you’re learning to do.

Link: https://www.wolfdynamics.com/tutorials.html

The OpenFOAM Journal

I only came across this one late last year and it features published papers that only use OpenFOAM as the tool for investigations! Pure gold if you ask me when it comes to validated results!

Link: https://journal.openfoam.com/index.php/ofj/index

The source code itself!

I wrote this a few months ago and it got very popular with over 700 hits in a weekend!

Weekly poll:

See you soon. 👋
Nasser