Abstract
Recent years have witnessed a significant proliferation of numerical libraries being used in computational continuum mechanics. While the appearance of open source codes in general, is a positive development, the question of correct implementation of the various methods and solvers remains to be addressed. This question can be only answered by performing validation and verification exercises. In this work we focus on the verification and validation of Caelus, an open source library for computational continuum mechanics.
The Caelus library is a general purpose framework for the solution of the continuum mechanics problems. The framework is a derivative of the OpenFOAM library with an emphasis on improved accuracy and robustness. As such, Caelus is an open source library developed and distributed under the GPL license agreement. One of the goals is to provide a framework that is both verified and validated. This work concentrates on the verification and validation of incompressible flow solvers. Both analytical methods and experimental data were used in the verification and validation process.
A few known analytical solutions, such as Couette and Kovasznay flow, are used for verification of the incompressible flow solver. The Kovasznay class of flow solutions are of particular interest as they represent viscous flow solutions behind an array of bluff bodies at a non-trivial Reynolds number.
Validation of Caelus incompressible solvers consists of computing solutions for a flat plate laminar boundary layer, flow through a tee-junction, and a triangular lid driven cavity and comparing to known values for each case. In all cases excellent agreement was found between the numerical, analytical and experimental results.