OFF,Open source Finite volume Fluid dynamics code: A free,high-order solver based on parallel,modular, object-oriented Fortran API

OFF, an open source (free software) code for performing fluid dynamics simulations, is presented. The aim of OFF is to solve, numerically, the unsteady (and steady) compressible Navier–Stokes equations of fluid dynamics by means of finite volume techniques: the research background is mainly focused on high-order (WENO) schemes for multi-fluids, multi-phase flows over complex geometries. To this purpose a highly modular, object-oriented application program interface (API) has been developed. In particular, the concepts of data encapsulation and inheritance available within Fortran language (from standard 2003) have been stressed in order to represent each fluid dynamics “entity” (e.g. the conservative variables of a finite volume, its geometry, etc…) by a single object so that a large variety of computational libraries can be easily (and efficiently) developed upon these objects. The main features of OFF can be summarized as follows: