External aerodynamics
External aerodynamics and drag in OpenFOAM, without the dictionaries
Set up incompressible external flow — drag, lift, wakes and separation — with snappyHexMesh, boundary layers and a turbulence model, then read the forces off a report.
What it is
Flow around a body rather than through a duct: a vehicle, a building, an aerofoil, a hull. Steady incompressible RANS covers most of it, with a transient run when the wake will not settle.
What the application sets up
- A farfield domain sized around the imported geometry
- snappyHexMesh with surface refinement and boundary layers on the body
- Inlet, outlet, farfield and no-slip wall conditions with the fields each one needs
- Force and force-coefficient function objects, so drag is reported rather than derived by hand
- A report that splits drag into its pressure and friction components
Typical uses
- Drag and lift on a vehicle or aerofoil
- Wake structure behind a bluff body
- Separation on an aerofoil or control surface
- Wind loading on a structure
Industries
Sectors where this analysis is routinely asked for.
- Automotive & motorsport
- Built environment
- Rail & transport
- Marine superstructures
What comes out
- Drag and lift coefficients
- Surface pressure distribution
- Wake and separation visualisation
- Pressure versus friction drag breakdown
OpenFOAM solvers
simpleFoampimpleFoampotentialFoam
Selected and configured for you from the analysis type. You can still see every dictionary the application writes.
In every tier
This analysis type is in the free build. The free tier limits mesh size to 250,000 cells and solving to one core — not which physics you may use.
On accuracy, plainly.
Every analysis type is exercised end to end on every pass — its case is generated, meshed and run — which establishes that the setup is right, not that the answer matches your geometry. No CFD result is evidence until it is checked against something you trust: a measurement, a hand calculation, or a mesh-refinement study the application will run for you. Treat these results with the judgement you would apply to any CFD you set up yourself.