Overview

Overall Aim

The solids4foam project aims is to develop an OpenFOAM toolbox for solid mechanics and fluid-solid interactions that is:

• intuitive to use for new users
• easy to understand at the case and code level
• straightforward to maintain
• uncomplicated to extend

In addition, the toolbox should be compatible will all major OpenFOAM forks, as far as reasonably possible.

solids4foam builds on the toolboxes stressAnalysis, solidMechanics and extendBazaar

Modular Approach

Coding Style

When consistent style is not followed, reading code generated by others becomes tedious, painstaking and even impossible. Coding style is a crucial feature of software that is easy to read, understand, maintain and extend. Fortunately, the OpenFOAM Foundation have set out a comprehensive coding style at https://openfoam.org/dev/coding-style-guide.

Bad

Info <<"This is not good"
<< endl;

( a+b ) * ( c&d ) / (e&&f)

if(myName == "Philip"){
success = true;
}

…

Good

Info<< "That's better"
    << endl;

(a + b)*(c & d)/(e && f)

if (myName == "Philip")
{
    success = true;
}

…

Finite Volume vs Finite Difference vs Finite Element

The finite volume method is a generalisation of the finite difference method, in terms of geometry and topology, but the methods differ in their philosophy.