Once you have a model from which you can obtain results it’s just a matter of wrestling them into a combination that works best. It’s rather complicated- ish so I dedicated a separate blog post to it. I decided to cut them from pipes and scripted a program (called model from now on) that takes geometry parameters, runs a simulation and returns rotor torque. I’m building a wind turbine and right at the beginning my party was pooped by the most important element – the blades. This post is a guide to OpenFOAM and DAKOTA from installation to an optimized solution. (finding the optimum combinations of inputs for the best output) (long story short: checking which variable has the greatest influence on the result) Luckily, OpenFOAM and DAKOTA together provide an almost ready-to-use solution just for that:

In many cases the poor engineer has to wrestle an awfully long list of design parameters into a state-of-the-art shape. Running a single CFD simulation rarely provides enough information to find a good hydraulic or aerodynamic design of a component.

Freecad openfoam