Software Links
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CAElinux - This is a liveDVD (operating system which can
be booted without installation to hard disk) which contains a base linux installation and many very high
quality computer aided engineering (CAE) tools. Updates as of version 2010 include: PCLinuxOS .92,
Salome 2.2.8, Code Aster 8.2, Elmer, Impact, Tochnog, Calculix, MBDyn, OpenFOAM,
Gerris Flow Solver, Octave, Scilab, Maxima and QCad.
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OpenFOAM - This is a free, open source CFD software
package produced by a commercial company, OpenCFD Ltd. It has a large user base across
most areas of engineering and science, from both commercial and academic organisations.
OpenFOAM has an extensive range of features to solve anything from complex fluid flows
involving chemical reactions, turbulence and heat transfer, to solid dynamics and electromagnetics.
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Paraview - ParaView is an open-source, multi-platform data
analysis and visualization application. ParaView users can quickly build visualizations to analyze their
data using qualitative and quantitative techniques. The data exploration can be done interactively in 3D or
programmatically using ParaView's batch processing capabilities.
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VisIt - VisIt is a free interactive parallel visualization and
graphical analysis tool for viewing scientific data on Unix and PC platforms. Users can quickly generate
visualizations from their data, animate them through time, manipulate them, and save the resulting images
for presentations. VisIt contains a rich set of visualization features so that you can view your data
in a variety of ways.
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PETSc - pronounced PET-see (the S is silent),
is a suite of data structures and routines for the
scalable (parallel) solution of scientific applications modeled by partial differential equations. It
employs the MPI standard for parallelism.
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PORT - This nonlinear optimization software package is
available via the Netlib software repositories and was developed by Bell Labs. PORT is written in
Fortran but can be incorporated successfully with C/C++ analysis codes. The full PORT documentation is available from Bell Labs as well. This
software is particularly suited to computational design optimization and has been used with great success
in those endeavors.
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Octave - GNU Octave is a high-level
interpreted language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides
capabilities for the numerical solution of linear and nonlinear problems, and for
performing other numerical experiments. The interface will be familiar to users of the Matlab
software package.
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Maxima - Maxima is a system for the manipulation
of symbolic and numerical expressions, including differentiation, integration, Taylor series, Laplace
transforms, ordinary differential equations, systems of linear equations, polynomials, and sets, lists,
vectors, matrices, and tensors. Maxima yields high precision numeric results by using exact
fractions, arbitrary precision integers, and variable precision floating point numbers. Maxima can
plot functions and data in two and three dimensions. Maple users will feel right at home with the syntax
and functionality.
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HDF5 - is a data model, library, and
file format for storing and managing data. It
supports an unlimited variety of datatypes, and is designed for flexible and
efficient I/O and for high volume and complex data.
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CGNS - The CFD General Notation System (CGNS)
provides a general, portable, and extensible standard for the storage and retrieval of
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis data. It consists of a collection of
conventions, and free and open software implementing those conventions.
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Gmsh - This software is a 3D finite element grid generator with
a build-in CAD engine and post-processor. Its design goal is to provide a fast, light and user-friendly
meshing tool with parametric input and advanced visualization capabilities. This mesh generator does
fairly well with small geometries of reasonable complexity. The CAD engine is fairly limited but the
software has been found useful on several occasions.
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enGrid - This is an open-source mesh generation
software with CFD applications in mind. enGrid uses the NETGEN library for tetrahedral grid
generation and an in-house development for prismatic boundary layer grids. The quality of the grids
generated seems to be high and due to the anisotropic boundary layer insertion algorithm. This
capability makes this software especially well suited to viscous CFD simulations.
