Dear community,
I would like to point out the 1.0 release of Palabos, and make a few comments on the content, the history, and the future of the software.
As I’ve already mentioned in the general announcements section[/url], we have founded the company [url=http://flowkit.com/]FlowKit Ltd. that offers commercial support formulas for your daily use of Palabos. Palabos is and remains open-source, and you can use it free of charge.
Palabos has been continuously developed for many years now. In the beginning, it came under the name of OpenLB, and I was the only author of the code. Other authors joined, and as the complexity of the software increased, we took the decision to rewrite the source code from scratch, based on the gained experience. The result of this operation is the Palabos software which, among others, offers a generic parallel platform for the implementation of lattice Boltzmann-like models, and for the coupling between physical models.
Since the first release of Palabos, we have started exploiting this implementation platform, and walking through the lattice Boltzmann literature, have gathered a variety of models and coded them for Palabos. The implemented features now range from classical CFD with advanced boundary modeling, over turbulence models and multi-phase applications, to the simulation of complex flows with active or passive particles. The “1.0” numbering of the release is symbolic and reflects the fact that Palabos now matches, in quality and diversity, the requirements for a solid and professional CFD product.
The original code branch is still being maintained and developed under the code name OpenLB, by Mathias Krause and his team at the Karlsruhe institute of technology. In order to focus our resources, the Palabos team will from now on officially discontinue offering support for OpenLB, and we link you to this projects’ web page instead.
A last word on the implementation of a free-surface model in Palabos, which you can already see in action on the web page. This model is not yet available in the 1.0 release, as we are still working on the quality of its implementation, but we do plan to provide a new release shortly that will include this model.
On the behalf of the Palabos team, I am looking forward to continue collaborating with all of you, and hope you will enjoy the brand new Palabos code.
Cheers,
Jonas