OpenFOAM offers an easy way to solve for a single flow in systems with porous zones, with the possibility of specifying the porosity and to use Darcy-Forchheimer or power law models. This feature is very versatile, allowing the user to specify also porous zones not aligned with the main reference frame and multiple porous zones in the same case. Currently this feature is implemented in a compressible flow solver (rhoPorousSimpleFoam), with both an explicit and an implicit treatment of the momentum source term due to the presence of the porous zone. I will show the basic functionalities of this OpenFOAM feature with a simple example of a 2D channel made…
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Unsteady boundary conditions in openFOAM
I recently had to help a friend setting up a case in OpenFOAM, where a ramp boundary condition for the velocity was required. Apparently OpenFOAM doesn’t offer this boudary condition, or at least it might seem so at a first impression. Actually, OpenFOAM offers a very general way to specify unsteady boundary conditions called timeVaryingFixedValue, which can read a data set from a text file, interpolate them with respect to time and use them to generate the unsteady boundary condition. I will show how to use this boundary condition with a simple example of a ramp for a velocity boundary condition. We want the velocity to ramp from the value…
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A good idea from Fedora
I came to know from Moro’s blog that Fedora has a project called Fedora Unity with, among the others, the task to prepare re-spins of the ISO images of the distribution. I think it is a very good service, because who starts to use the distribution do not need to download the ISO and then a huge number of updates. It would be nice if other distributions like openSUSE did the same, and I hope they will consider the idea in the future.
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Coffee…
Today, in a discussion with some friend I found out that there is a lot of confusion about how coffee is prepared and what is its caffeine content. Let’s look at it a bit more closely. First of all, the coffee preparation is a process that technically is called solid-liquid extraction. The water (liquid) goes through the coffee, and in the meanwhile extracts the substances that will give it the taste and the consistence. In other words, it is water that acts as a solvent for certain substances contained in the coffee powder. The preparation of a coffee does not involve steam, and surely is not an extraction with steam!…
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Send your name to the moon!
If you want to go to the Moon, you might be interested in this initiative to send a list of all the names who supported the mission of the LRO spacecraft, bringing NASA back to the moon. To have your name added it’s simply enought to fill the form and submit. You’ll be able to download a certificate proving your support to the mission. My certificate is here!
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openSUSE 11.0 is out!
OpenSUSE 11.0 was released on Thursday 19th as scheduled in the release roadmap, and can be downloaded from the openSUSE site. This version of openSUSE supports the 32bit, 64bit and PPC architectures, with a set of media constituted by the conventional, full featured DVD, the installable CD with the GNOME or KDE4 desktops, and the mini ISO CD for the network installation for the most experienced users. The best innovations introduced in openSUSE 11.0 are listed in the sneak peeks written by Francis Giannaros, that you can read here. The detailed feature list can be found on the product highlights. The following list sums up the most important of them:…
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Big Buck Bunny arrived!
Big Buck Bunny, the movie created using the open source software Blender and Gimp, is ready! You can see the trailer directly from the official site or buy the DVD. Great movie!
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openSUSE 11.0 Italian translations
OpenSUSE 11.0 is close to its release, as you can see from the countdown below, and as usual also its Italian translations will arrive on time, thanks to the hard work of the translation team, which for this release is even bigger than for the previous one. You can see the translation statistics of our team here, and our position compared to other teams here. Translations should be complete in openSUSE 11.0 starting from its Release Candidate 1, due on May 29. Please, if you test it, report all translations bug on bugzilla.novell.com, specifying where the translation mistake is (a screenshot attached to the bugreport is welcome), and assigning the…
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Reiman gardens
Today I visited Reimand Gardens in Ames, where I could admire various beautiful butterflies in the fascinating Butterfly Wing, where, after a very nice explanation about the varieties of butterflies present in the garden, you can literally walk among butterflies flying around you and admire them in all their beauty. The garden offers also Peter Pan’s path for kids, where you can sit surrounded by a very pleasurable set of trees and flowers, and an external path, where you can admire the roses collection (still not visible due to the long winter of this year), a nice small lake, birds, and of course flowers. You can see the pictures I…
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openSUSE 11.0 – Beta 1
OpenSUSE 11.0 beta 1 was released today, and it’s available through the openSUSE site. All openSUSE users are invited to test it, with particular care about the installer, the package manager and the audio system, which now implements PulseAudio. The most annoying bugs are reported here. Note: If you use VirtualBox, there’s a simple fix to be able to use the X server. At the end of the installation, the system will present a text based login screen. As reported by Benjamin here, it’s enough to login as root and use these commands to fix X configuration: sax2 -m 0=vesa rcxdm restart