About
Ideas about dolfyn date back to 2001. To enable the start of the development a Dutch foundation was established by a couple of companies and institutions in the region of Zuidoost Brabant (in the south of the Netherlands). Version 0.3 was released in 2005 thanks to the foundation Stichting Dolfyn and the Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij / Innovative Actions Brabant. The foundation was lead by Peet Franken, Franken Consultancy, Helmond.
De source code of dolfyn is written and owned by (except where noted otherwise) Cyclone Fluid Dynamics BV te Waalre:
Sweelincklaan 4
NL-5583 XM Waalre
tel.: +31-40-22 30 491
@ info[at]cyclone[dot]nl
The development of dolfyn continued after 2005 with scalars, particles and many other features. Dolfyn was chosen to be the solver for the Comflow package, and it was used by the American National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a benchmark for their development called FiPy. Moreover was dolfyn included in the ‘CAE linux’ distribution. To enhance the cooperation of industry and academic world the GPL licence was changed in 2007 into the Apache License, 2.0.
In 2008 the basics of the code was proved to be bug free. In the second half of 2008 the robustness of dolfyn was improved drastically and the first promotion was celebrated in december at the TU Delft:
Development of a generic engineering model for packed bed reactors using Computational Fluid Dynamics
by dr.ir. Bouke Tuinstra
Teaching CFD
In order to be able to teach and draw young polytechnical and academic students, graduated engineers, and new enthusiasts towards the wonderful world of Computational Fluid Dynamics a couple of issues have to be kept in mind:
- Courses and tutorials should focus in the first place on a general understanding of fluid dynamics (laminar/turbulent, buoyancy, boundary layers etc.).
- (Open Source) Software can play an important role in the teaching process (and can augment experimental practica, thus combining theoretical and practical results.).
- Therefore, the code has to be easy in use; simple variants must be easy to run and the results visualised.
- In order to catch the attention, real geometries such as cars, heatexchangers and walls should be used as well as flows along flat plates and through pipes.
- Only when the student has mastered the before mentioned items; then ‘gridgeneration’ or ‘meshing’ is the next, and very, very important, step. As gridgeneration is linked closely to the type of solver software, the capabilities of the preprocessor and the skills of the engineer, it is left out of the dolfyn project.
Dolfyn is based on the ideas, algorithms, and procedures presented in the book by J.H. Ferziger & M. Peric “Computational Methods for Fluid Dynamics” (Springer). This book is also acts as Theoretical Manual.
Support
During the past years dolfyn was made possible and has been supported by:
- Willo Eurlings, Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij, Tilburg
- Gerbert van der Wal, BOM / Innovatieve Acties Brabant, Tilburg
- Marcel Muitjens, ASML, Veldhoven
- Hub Wedershoven, Fontys Hogescholen, Eindhoven
- Wim Ravesloot, Syntens, Eindhoven
- Piet Wesseling, TU Delft, Delft
- Martien Merks, UGS PLM Solutions, Den Bosch
- Jan van Heesbeen, MSE Structural Analysis, St. Michielsgestel
- Johan Jacobs, Simex Technology, Veldhoven
- Tjietze Kampen, Viro Engineering, Eindhoven
- Jos Bakema, Gemco SAS, Best
- Sergei Shulepov, Philips CFT, Eindhoven
- Ricardo Toffolo, United Brains / Fontys Hogescholen, Eindhoven
- Aad van der Steen en Thomas Geenen, Universiteit Utrecht / High Performance Computing Group, Utrecht
- Leon Janssen, Berson UV-techniek, Nuenen
- Jos van Heck and Peter van de Velde, Daf Trucks, Eindhoven
- Bouke Tuinstra, Stork Product Engineering, Amsterdam
- Max Staufer, TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt
- Shibo Kuang, Univ. of New South Wales, Sydney
Thanks!