Speed around a NACA 0012 airfoil at 10 degrees, solved in FoamStudio. The fastest flow, over the leading edge, is gold. Pressure around the same airfoil. Suction over the upper surface is dark.

Every CFD run, from install to a validated answer.

FoamStudio is a desktop workbench for OpenFOAM. It installs the solver, writes the case, runs it, plots convergence while it runs, and checks the result against published data.

Get FoamStudio See how it works
25solvers the case generator writes
4ways to run: native, WSL, Docker, SSH
0.71%grid uncertainty on airfoil drag
0.851.251.65 |U|/U∞
NACA 0012, α 10°, Re 6×10⁶, Spalart–Allmaras, 84,000 cells. Move the pointer over the flow to read it.

The whole loop, in one window

The same seven steps every CFD job takes. FoamStudio does each one for you, shows the exact command it ran, and leaves you an ordinary OpenFOAM case you can open in a terminal at any point.

  1. InstallSets up WSL and OpenFOAM, or finds the one you have.
  2. CasePick a solver; every dictionary is written for you.
  3. GeometrySTL, OBJ, STEP, Gmsh, Fluent or any NACA section.
  4. MeshblockMesh or snappyHexMesh, sized from the y+ you want.
  5. RunSerial or MPI; keeps going if you close the app.
  6. MonitorResiduals, Cl and Cd live; stops when converged.
  7. ReportFields, streamlines, probes and an HTML or PDF report.

Meshes built for the wall

The airfoil template builds a 12-block C-mesh with a wall layer grown along the surface normal. Cells stay square to the wall, where the physics is hardest.

The 84,000-cell C-mesh around the NACA 0012, cells packed tightly against the surface
84,000 cells12 blocks, far field at 50 chords.
First cell 4×10⁻⁶ cAverage wall y+ of 0.47, so the boundary layer is resolved, not modelled.
4.9° mean skew at the wallDown from 29.8° before the wall layer was rebuilt from surface normals.

Built to be left running

Real captures from FoamStudio 0.9 on Windows 11, driving OpenFOAM v2412 inside WSL.

FoamStudio — naca0012-demo
FoamStudio dashboard: mesh size, runtime, live time step and forces across the top, run controls, residuals on a log axis and quick actions below.

The dashboard after 3,000 iterations: 84,000 cells, ESI v2412 in WSL, Cd 0.02026, residuals falling past 10⁻⁵, and every action one click away.

Convergence you can see

The residual history of the run in the hero image, straight from its solver log. Drag across it to read any iteration.

Raptor 3, start to plume

An engineering estimate of SpaceX's Raptor 3 sea-level nozzle, built on the validated method below: 350 bar, O/F 3.6, area ratio 34.34, gas properties matched to NASA CEA. Axisymmetric, 216,000 cells, run overnight in FoamStudio.

Plume start-up, 0–12 ms, mirrored about the axis
Quantity FoamStudio CFD 1-D theory CEA or reported
Sea-level thrust 245.7 tf 253 tf 250–280 tf reported
Sea-level Isp 335.5 s 343.7 s 349 s CEA, 350 s reported
Exit Mach (mass average) 3.80 3.84 3.79 CEA
Exit pressure 1.10 bar 1.10 bar 1.10 bar CEA
Mass flow 732 kg/s 736 kg/s —

Inputs are public estimates, not SpaceX data, and the exhaust is one gas with a CEA-matched γ. Values at 12 ms. The videos cover the full 12 ms run: the starting vortex ring, shear-layer roll-up and a train of weak shock diamonds behind a Mach disk that is still travelling downstream at 9.5 m. Pressure and density use log colour scales; each background is the colour of ambient air.

What is in it

Grouped by the point in a job where you reach for it.

Checked against the literature

Each case was run through FoamStudio on OpenFOAM v2412. The green band is the published reference; the dot is FoamStudio. The misses are shown too.

Grid convergence, refinement ratio 2

NACA 0012 drag converges monotonically on 22k, 90k and 358k cells (observed order 2.1). Richardson extrapolation gives 0.00847, 4.7% above the NASA TMR value; the gap is the 50-chord far field.

Quantity Coarse Medium Fine GCI
Cavity, min u −0.21000 −0.21305 −0.21142 0.23%
Step, x/h 5.59 5.90 6.03 10.7%
Airfoil, Cd 0.009356 0.008674 0.008515 0.71%

Solver checks with exact answers

    Grid convergence

    Error against the exact answer on successively finer meshes. A line steeper than the dotted order-1 slope means the error is falling faster than the mesh is shrinking.

    Group Series Meshes Mesh size h, coarse → fine Error measured Coarsest error Finest error Observed order GCI of p2/p1, fine

    Error is the distance from the exact answer. "Max property error, %" is the largest relative deviation among the checked quantities. "Primary error, % of scale" is the deviation of the one headline quantity (for example Cf or Nu) as a percentage of the exact value. "L1 density error" is the mean absolute density difference over the tube. Mesh size h is the cell size (shock, Prandtl-Meyer, channel, plate cases), 1/√cells (cone and intake cases) or 1/cells (Sod). Observed order is the log-log slope of error against h. GCI is the Roache grid convergence index, an error band on the fine-mesh p2/p1 value.

    A thin window over a core you can script

    WindowQt panels, 3D view, web dashboard Command line--write-case, --run-case, --report Coreall logic, no Qt imports, tested without a display Case generator Native bash WSL script Docker SSH One ordinary OpenFOAM case folder

    The case generator is the only thing that writes OpenFOAM dictionaries, so the window, the command line and CI produce byte-identical cases. WSL commands run as LF scripts inside the case, so no $ ever reaches wsl.exe, and Stop ends the whole Linux process group rather than only the Windows wrapper.

    Ten CI jobs on Windows, macOS and Linux run on every push, including a real solver run and an 85-step scripted walk through the GUI, with pip-audit, an SBOM, CodeQL and an 87% coverage gate on the core.

    Python 3.11+PySide6PyVistapyqtgraphNumPymeshioGmshParaViewWSL2DockerOpenSSH

    Install

    FoamStudio is commercial software: ₹3,000 per year, up to 3 machines. The installer ships Python and every library; OpenFOAM is set up on first launch.

    Buy a licence, ₹3,000 / year

    By buying you agree to the licence terms.

    1. Buy a licence

      Pay ₹3,000 on the payment page. The installer link and your licence key arrive by email.

    2. Choose how OpenFOAM is installed

      Automatic sets up Ubuntu 24.04 in WSL and OpenFOAM v2412. Already have one? Pick it from the Runtimes tab, or add an SSH machine.

    3. Run the demo

      The lid-driven cavity runs in about a minute and proves the whole chain works.

    From a terminal

    foamstudio --detect-runtimes > rt.json
foamstudio --airfoil 2412 --alpha 4 --re 3e6 --project wing
foamstudio --project wing --runtime rt.json --run-case
foamstudio --project wing --report wing.html

    Made by Shanthosh K V

    Third-year aerospace engineering student at RV College of Engineering, Bengaluru, working on CFD, rocket propulsion and the software that connects them.

    Portfolio Buy a licence Terms, refunds & privacy