Optimisation Technical Committee

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Optimisation Technical Committee


Welcome to the Optimisation Technical Committee's wiki page! Our job is to discuss about, propose and implement new optimisation capabilities for OpenFOAM. Here, you can find information about us, our current activities and also how to get in touch.


Members of the Committee

There are currently five committee members, led by Prof. Kyriakos Giannakoglou who acts as chairman:

  • Dr. Kyriakos Giannakoglou, Professor NTUA, Greece
  • Dr. E. Papoutsis-Kiachagias, NTUA & FOSS GP, Greece
  • Dr. K. Gkagkas, Toyota Motor Europe, Belgium
  • Dr. O. Amoignon, FOI, Sweden
  • Dr. M. Hojjat, BMW Group, Germany.

All Committee members have an extensive experience in gradient-based optimisation methods, which is currently the main focus of the Committee. The first two members are among the main authors of adjointOptimisationFoam, the main OpenFOAM executable implementing adjoint-based optimisation loops. The rest of the Committee members have an extensive experience in developing and applying optimisation methods and contribute their experience of doing so in industrial environments.

How to Contact Us

To contact the Committee on technical issues, we suggest that you open an issue on the OpenFOAM Gitlab, where you report problems, provide feedback, or describe your potential contribution. If you want to make sure our attention is drawn, add an @vaggelisp tag inside the issue. In case you prefer more traditional ways of communicating, you can always simply send us an e-mail. Some Committee members are usually present in the OpenFOAM User Conference, where they can be met in person.

Our Workflow

The Committee meets on a bi-annual basis, either physically or remotely. The Committee gathers remarks and suggestions about the current state of optimisation methods in OpenFOAM through the user's feedback and along with its own suggestions, proposes the next steps to be followed to the OpenFOAM Steering Committee. The drive of the Committee is to provide end-users with an industrially applicable software suite for conducting optimisation within OpenFOAM, hence new Committee members bringing on their industrial experience might soon be added.

Implemented Contributions

What follows is a list of new optimisation capabilities that were introduced into the code with the help of the committee. For more details, please follow the links.

- Introduction of adjointOptimisaFoam in v1906, an OpenFOAM executable solving the flow and adjoint equations for steady-state, incompressible, turbulent flows and supporting the computation of sensitivity maps.

- Enchanchment of adjointOptimisaFoam in v1912 with a parameterization scheme based on Volumetric B-Splines and a workflow for automated shape optimisation loops.

Activity Log

Courses/Webinars offered by K. Giannakoglou and E. Papoutsis-Kiachagias:

  • 2018-10-25, Hamburg, during the 6th OpenFOAM Conference: Course on Optimisation in OpenFOAM.
  • 2019-07-16, Webinar on “adjointOptimisationFOAM: The Continuous Adjoint Software Suite in OpenFOAM v1906”
  • 2019-10-17, Berlin, during the 7th OpenFOAM Conference: Course on Optimisation in OpenFOAM.
  • 2020-02-05/06, Frankfurt, Physical and virtual training on the Continuous Adjoint Method in Aero/Hydrodynamic Optimization (in v1912).
  • (coming soon) 2020-06-03/04, Scheduled Webinar on Adjoint Optimization in OpenFOAM v1912