Modelling water flow - software
August 4, 2019 1:14 AM   Subscribe

I'm seeking fluid modelling software, especially for water. I would like to do this at least partly in software as it takes more water flow than I can achieve at home. But what software? I need free, pref. FOSS, okay with cmd-line. I've looked at OpenFOAM but it's very hard to install, blender shows good graphics but I need realwater capability, and last time I tried blender 2009 it was hard to draw a polygon - also are Blender's water graphics 'real' or just pretty?! So what else is out there?

Background on what I want to research\achieve
I've had a bit to do with 'continuous deflective separators' aka 'Hydrodynamic Vortex Separators' abbrev. CDS. A while back I had the idea of building a less-heavily engineered one using fluid flow as part of the containment vessel Plan view [imgur] of my thinking (if this worked it'd be dramatically cheaper) and more understandable by the public.

I recently saw a demonstration of a 'soft' CDS formed in a riverbed using a tracked excavator, altho' the makers did it for something else and do not see the potential - I do.

Vortex systems use differing water velocities (sometimes with help from air entrainment\temp diffs.\PH etc) to separate different water flows to enable sediment settling. All the systems are doing is tripling the flow path in ~laminar flow conditions to settle particles out. The best systems are able to handle 20um and I believe 5um is on the near horizon.

Hydro International's brochure, 1.4Mb at vt.edu, explains the basics best, although there are lots of variations as these devices pop up wherever there is fluid flow.
posted by unearthed to Science & Nature (7 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
> last time I tried blender 2009 it was hard to draw a polygon

Blender actually just released a major new version (2.8) with massive changes to the UI, a brand-new real-time rendering engine etc. It's really, really good. Though, no changes in the water physics department as far as I'm aware. You'd need the help of a good, paid plugin like Flip Fluids ($76) to make it into a decent simulator, and I'm not entirely sure if it's actual, real physics or just eye candy either. Still, you might wanna check out Blender 2.8 regardless.

> I've looked at OpenFOAM but it's very hard to install

I hear there's simFlow, which "takes OpenFOAM libraries and puts them in a more user-friendly GUI". It apparently has a free version with limited node count.
posted by procrastinator at 2:31 AM on August 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


Beat me to it! The UI/UX update is good, along with real time raytracing. And I believe it is possible to get a discount Houdini license too. It won’t get better than that.
posted by lemon_icing at 2:51 AM on August 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I'm wondering if one of the HEC products created, used, and distributed by the US Army Corps of Engineers would work for your purposes. I use them all the time for hydrologic and hydraulic modeling of natural and constructed channels.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:39 AM on August 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


Best answer: ParFlow? Powerful hydrology models.
posted by MiraK at 8:09 AM on August 4, 2019


Response by poster: Great, thanks to everyone - four things I've never heard of - and some reading and checking to do.

Blender with Flip Fluids looks very promising procrastinator. My CAD person in Melbourne has very recently decided to switch to Blender so there's hope there

Yes, I hadn't thought of HEC hydropsyche but they've come along, there's an interesting riparian model they're working on too, which I'll keep a watch on.

Parflow doesn't say what they charge - probabluy too much is my experience, but some good reading on the page so thanks MiraK

Reading on from some of the things above I've also found:
wasp on the epa and ANSYS CFX2Fluent which looks interesting and may be free
posted by unearthed at 4:13 AM on August 5, 2019


ParFlow is open source, free to download and use under a GNU LPGL license.
posted by MiraK at 11:48 AM on August 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks again everyone, I had a deep followup of your links which led me some helpful places.

Also I've just found a great looking book Computational Fluid Dynamics: Applications in Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater Treatment 2019

and Paraview from Kitware, which if it works and is 'driveable' should be fine. Although I may still have to go the OpenFOAM route which also means installing Windows System for Linux (the windows route is to fraught).

Blender sure looks beguiling but I've just had a reply from Ryan who wrote FLIP Fluids that it is not suitable [github-link] for simulating real water well enough to simulate reality - "Some of the features ... are just graphics tricks".

IDK if products like HEC and ParFlow scale downward enough although it looks like they don't. Several very useful products there for other areas of my work so great finds!
posted by unearthed at 2:52 PM on August 16, 2019


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