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by blauditore 2147 days ago
Tangentially related: For a long time I've always been looking for some software for particle simulations that is free or even open source, easy to get started, and at least somewhat visual. I'm not doing anything like that professionally, just want to play around with a virtual wind tunnel for the fun of it. I'm thinking of something like Blender where I would click together a 3d mesh, "turn on" wind and see what happens.

Does anyone have tips or hints? Are my expectations perhaps unrealistic? I looked into OpenFOAM before but always eventually gave up, as it seems quite heavy on headless, scripted simulation, and would need some significant run-up time.
3 comments
jpm48 2147 days ago
Specifically for fluid (and similar) you could have a play with mantaflow http://mantaflow.com/ it's relatively easy to build (you will need Qt and Python). Houdini (free apprentice version will work for fun) is great for particle effects and this sort of stuff as well https://www.sidefx.com/
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eric_t 2147 days ago
Associate professor in fluid dynamics here. There is typically a split between the people who want good looking simulations for movies/games, and those who need accurate results for engineering. For engineering, you need more effort on how you resolve the complex geometry and how you model the turbulence in the flow. This adds significant complexity both for problem setup and solution time. The only product I’m aware of that is built for real-time, 3D flow design is Ansys Discovery: https://www.ansys.com/products/3d-design/ansys-discovery

OpenFOAM is high quality, but as you’ve seen complex to use. There is a web-based GUI that can lighten the burden to get started somewhat: https://www.simscale.com/ I think they give you ~3000 simulation hours for a trial.

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vosper 2147 days ago
I've been trying to figure out where I should place a shelter belt on my property, as I've heard that the wind will rise up over the belt and then "dump" downwards. I don't want to position the belt so that the wind dumps on my house. I think it's essentially a fluid dynamics problem (I say this as decidedly not an engineer).

I've only looked half-heartedly, but found nothing that can help me.

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