Development of User Interface for OpenFOAM Software Environment Used in Design and Technological Subdivisions of Machine-Building Enterprises

The paper is devoted to special features of the development of an application with a user interface for numerical analysis using OpenFOAM, an open source software environment (SE), in different industrial lines: rocket engineering, automobile, engine-building, aerospace. OpenFOAM is widely applied in the engineering design of products to simulate processes, typical for these products, e.g., the simulation of aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, mechanics of a deformable solid body. OpenFOAM has a key disadvantage: no user interface is available for the SE, all phases of numerical simulation are made with a console application. In the paper the authors analyze the available applications with the user interface, which can be used with OpenFOAM, their drawbacks and define the urgency for the development of a new software product. The authors received the results with the features of scientific novelty of the development. In particular, the authors implemented a mechanism of serialization of parameters of meshes to ensure the possibility to generate any quantity of meshes for one case in OpenFOAM, a mechanism to use bash-scripting for automatic executing console commands; and the possibility to prepare hexagonal dominating parametrical 2D meshes. The developed application expands the OpenFOAM source code, it was registered by Federal Institute of Industrial Property (certificates No 2016613637 dated April 1st, 2016 and No 2018616380 dated May 30th, 2018). If used, the application saves the working hours of experts, makes the understanding of the principles of numerical simulation with OpenFOAM easier.