For compatibility with all the mesh and related classes in OpenFOAM The 'normal'
function of the 'triangle', 'triFace' and 'face' classes now returns the unit
normal vector rather than the vector area which is now provided by the 'area'
function.
In early versions of OpenFOAM the scalar limits were simple macro replacements and the
names were capitalized to indicate this. The scalar limits are now static
constants which is a huge improvement on the use of macros and for consistency
the names have been changed to camel-case to indicate this and improve
readability of the code:
GREAT -> great
ROOTGREAT -> rootGreat
VGREAT -> vGreat
ROOTVGREAT -> rootVGreat
SMALL -> small
ROOTSMALL -> rootSmall
VSMALL -> vSmall
ROOTVSMALL -> rootVSmall
The original capitalized are still currently supported but their use is
deprecated.
The 4.x tracking enforces reduced dimensionality on the parcels by
moving them to the centre of the mesh at the start of each track,
without considering the topology. This can leave the parcel outside it's
associated tetrahedron.
The barycentric algorithm isn't tolerant to incorrect topology, so
instead of changing position, it was written to track to the mesh
centre. This worked, but effectively doubled the number of tracking
calls. This additional cost has now been removed by absorbing the
constraint displacement into the existing motion track, so that the same
number of tracking steps are performed as before.
Partially resolves bug report https://bugs.openfoam.org/view.php?id=2688
A lot of methods were taking argument data which could be referenced or
generated from the parcel class at little or no additional cost. This
was confusing and generated the possibility of inconsistent data states.
Tracking data classes are no longer templated on the derived cloud type.
The advantage of this is that they can now be passed to sub models. This
should allow continuous phase data to be removed from the parcel
classes. The disadvantage is that every function which once took a
templated TrackData argument now needs an additional TrackCloudType
argument in order to perform the necessary down-casting.
Particle collisions with ACMI patches are now handled. The hit detects
whether the location is within the overlap or the coupled region and
recurses, calling the hit routine appropriate for the region.
The low level tracking methods are now more consistently named. There is
now a distinction between tracking to a face and hitting it. Function
object side effects have been moved out of the base layer and into the
parcels on which they are meaningful.
Tracking through an inverted region of the mesh happens in a reversed
direction relative to a non-inverted region. Usually, this allows the
tracking to propagate normally, regardless of the sign of the space.
However, in rare cases, it is possible for a straight trajectory to form
a closed loop through both positive and negative regions. This causes
the tracking to loop indefinitely.
To fix this, the displacement through inverted regions has been
artifically increased by a small amount (1% at the moment). This has the
effect that the change in track fraction over the negative part of the
loop no longer exactly cancels the change over the positive part, and
the track therefore terminates.
The KinematicCloud::patchData method has been made consistent on moving
meshes and/or when the time-step is being sub-cycled.
It has also been altered to calculate the normal component of a moving
patch's velocity directly from the point motions. This prevents an
infinite loop occuring due to inconsistency between the velocity used to
calculate a rebound and that used when tracking.
Some minor style improvements to the particle class have also been made.
When an OpenFOAM simulation runs in parallel, the data for decomposed fields and
mesh(es) has historically been stored in multiple files within separate
directories for each processor. Processor directories are named 'processorN',
where N is the processor number.
This commit introduces an alternative "collated" file format where the data for
each decomposed field (and mesh) is collated into a single file, which is
written and read on the master processor. The files are stored in a single
directory named 'processors'.
The new format produces significantly fewer files - one per field, instead of N
per field. For large parallel cases, this avoids the restriction on the number
of open files imposed by the operating system limits.
The file writing can be threaded allowing the simulation to continue running
while the data is being written to file. NFS (Network File System) is not
needed when using the the collated format and additionally, there is an option
to run without NFS with the original uncollated approach, known as
"masterUncollated".
The controls for the file handling are in the OptimisationSwitches of
etc/controlDict:
OptimisationSwitches
{
...
//- Parallel IO file handler
// uncollated (default), collated or masterUncollated
fileHandler uncollated;
//- collated: thread buffer size for queued file writes.
// If set to 0 or not sufficient for the file size threading is not used.
// Default: 2e9
maxThreadFileBufferSize 2e9;
//- masterUncollated: non-blocking buffer size.
// If the file exceeds this buffer size scheduled transfer is used.
// Default: 2e9
maxMasterFileBufferSize 2e9;
}
When using the collated file handling, memory is allocated for the data in the
thread. maxThreadFileBufferSize sets the maximum size of memory in bytes that
is allocated. If the data exceeds this size, the write does not use threading.
When using the masterUncollated file handling, non-blocking MPI communication
requires a sufficiently large memory buffer on the master node.
maxMasterFileBufferSize sets the maximum size in bytes of the buffer. If the
data exceeds this size, the system uses scheduled communication.
The installation defaults for the fileHandler choice, maxThreadFileBufferSize
and maxMasterFileBufferSize (set in etc/controlDict) can be over-ridden within
the case controlDict file, like other parameters. Additionally the fileHandler
can be set by:
- the "-fileHandler" command line argument;
- a FOAM_FILEHANDLER environment variable.
A foamFormatConvert utility allows users to convert files between the collated
and uncollated formats, e.g.
mpirun -np 2 foamFormatConvert -parallel -fileHandler uncollated
An example case demonstrating the file handling methods is provided in:
$FOAM_TUTORIALS/IO/fileHandling
The work was undertaken by Mattijs Janssens, in collaboration with Henry Weller.
now possible with level-sets as well as planes. Removed tetPoints class
as this wasn't really used anywhere except for the old tet-cutting
routines. Restored tetPointRef.H to be consistent with other primitive
shapes. Re-wrote tet-overlap mapping in terms of the new cutting.
terms of the local barycentric coordinates of the current tetrahedron,
rather than the global coordinate system.
Barycentric tracking works on any mesh, irrespective of mesh quality.
Particles do not get "lost", and tracking does not require ad-hoc
"corrections" or "rescues" to function robustly, because the calculation
of particle-face intersections is unambiguous and reproducible, even at
small angles of incidence.
Each particle position is defined by topology (i.e. the decomposed tet
cell it is in) and geometry (i.e. where it is in the cell). No search
operations are needed on restart or reconstruct, unlike when particle
positions are stored in the global coordinate system.
The particle positions file now contains particles' local coordinates
and topology, rather than the global coordinates and cell. This change
to the output format is not backwards compatible. Existing cases with
Lagrangian data will not restart, but they will still run from time
zero without any modification. This change was necessary in order to
guarantee that the loaded particle is valid, and therefore
fundamentally prevent "loss" and "search-failure" type bugs (e.g.,
2517, 2442, 2286, 1836, 1461, 1341, 1097).
The tracking functions have also been converted to function in terms
of displacement, rather than end position. This helps remove floating
point error issues, particularly towards the end of a tracking step.
Wall bounded streamlines have been removed. The implementation proved
incompatible with the new tracking algorithm. ParaView has a surface
LIC plugin which provides equivalent, or better, functionality.
Additionally, bug report <https://bugs.openfoam.org/view.php?id=2517>
is resolved by this change.
In most boundary conditions, fvOptions etc. required and optional fields
to be looked-up from the objectRegistry are selected by setting the
keyword corresponding to the standard field name in the BC etc. to the
appropriate name in the objectRegistry. Usually a default is provided
with sets the field name to the keyword name, e.g. in the
totalPressureFvPatchScalarField the velocity is selected by setting the
keyword 'U' to the appropriate name which defaults to 'U':
Property | Description | Required | Default value
U | velocity field name | no | U
phi | flux field name | no | phi
.
.
.
However, in some BCs and functionObjects and many fvOptions another
convention is used in which the field name keyword is appended by 'Name'
e.g.
Property | Description | Required | Default value
pName | pressure field name | no | p
UName | velocity field name | no | U
This difference in convention is unnecessary and confusing, hinders code
and dictionary reuse and complicates code maintenance. In this commit
the appended 'Name' is removed from the field selection keywords
standardizing OpenFOAM on the first convention above.
Contributed by Mattijs Janssens.
1. Any non-blocking data exchange needs to know in advance the sizes to
receive so it can size the buffer. For "halo" exchanges this is not
a problem since the sizes are known in advance but or all other data
exchanges these sizes need to be exchanged in advance.
This was previously done by having all processors send the sizes of data to
send to the master and send it back such that all processors
- had the same information
- all could work out who was sending what to where and hence what needed to
be received.
This is now changed such that we only send the size to the
destination processor (instead of to all as previously). This means
that
- the list of sizes to send is now of size nProcs v.s. nProcs*nProcs before
- we cut out the route to the master and back by using a native MPI
call
It causes a small change to the API of exchange and PstreamBuffers -
they now return the sizes of the local buffers only (a labelList) and
not the sizes of the buffers on all processors (labelListList)
2. Reversing the order of the way in which the sending is done when
scattering information from the master processor to the other
processors. This is done in a tree like fashion. Each processor has a
set of processors to receive from/ send to. When receiving it will
first receive from the processors with the least amount of
sub-processors (i.e. the ones which return first). When sending it
needs to do the opposite: start sending to the processor with the
most amount of sub-tree since this is the critical path.
The deprecated non-const tmp functionality is now on the compiler switch
NON_CONST_TMP which can be enabled by adding -DNON_CONST_TMP to EXE_INC
in the Make/options file. However, it is recommended to upgrade all
code to the new safer tmp by using the '.ref()' member function rather
than the non-const '()' dereference operator when non-const access to
the temporary object is required.
Please report any problems on Mantis.
Henry G. Weller
CFD Direct.
