Introduction

This page has information on running OpenFoam interactively as well as in batch mode on the RC-Cluster (currently Cannon). To learn basics of modeling with OpenFoam, please visit:

OpenFOAM - Modeling Basics

Openfoam via singularity container

We have built a singularity container with freecad, gmsh, openfoam and paraview. The container can be used on the RC-Cluster (in both the interactive and batch modes) or on a local linux machine with singularity installed.

On the RC-Cluster

Running interactively

Connect to the RC-Cluster (currently Cannon) via OnDemand (https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/resources/documentation/virtual-desktop/). Open a terminal and create a directory for OpenFoam:

mkdir openfoam-test
cd openfoam-test

Run the openFoam container with shell option to obtain a command shell.

singularity shell /n/seas_computing/scientific_software/freecad-OpenFoam.simg

Once inside shell, you should be able to run a simple test job as follows:

source /opt/openfoam8/etc/bashrc

cp -r $FOAM_TUTORIALS/incompressible/simpleFoam/pitzDaily .
cd pitzDaily
blockMesh
simpleFoam

Running in batch

To run openfoam in batch, you can create a bash script with openfoam setup, meshing and run commands in a script (say scr_pitzDaily) and invoke the script via singularity in a slurm submit script (say openfoam_pitzDaily.sh). The script "scr_pitzDaily" might look like:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
source /opt/openfoam8/etc/bashrc
rm -rf pitzDaily 
cp -r $FOAM_TUTORIALS/incompressible/simpleFoam/pitzDaily/ .
cd pitzDaily 
#Create mesh
blockMesh 
#Run openfoam via the solver simpleFoam
simpleFoam

The submit script "openfoam_pitzDaily.sh" might look like:

#!/bin/bash 
#SBATCH -n 1  #Number of cores 
#SBATCH -N 1  #Number of nodes 
#SBATCH -t 60  #Runtime in minutes 
#SBATCH -p general  #Partition to submit to 
#SBATCH --mem-per-cpu=500 #Memory per cpu in MB (see also --mem) 

module load intel/17.0.4-fasrc01 impi/2017.2.174-fasrc01

singularity exec /n/seas_computing/scientific_software/freecad-OpenFoam.simg ./scr_pitzDaily    

# Report some useful info

date

exit