Fluidity — The Complete Guide: Free Adaptive-Mesh CFD for Ocean and Geophysical Flow
Fluidity is an open-source CFD solver from Imperial College whose unstructured mesh adapts to the flow: oceans, tsunamis, multiphase and mantle convection.
Guides and Articles
FDS and Smokeview — The Complete Guide: Free Fire and Smoke Simulation in Buildings
FDS from NIST is the world standard for fire and smoke simulation in buildings: temperature, visibility and smoke layers, shown in 3D by Smokeview. A guide.
code_saturne — The Complete Guide: Industrial CFD From EDF With a Graphical Interface, Free
code_saturne is the open-source CFD solver from French utility EDF: turbulence, heat transfer, combustion and multiphase, with a GUI and SALOME integration.
SSAP — The Complete Guide: Free Limit Equilibrium Slope Stability Analysis
SSAP computes slope safety factors by limit equilibrium — Morgenstern-Price, Spencer, Janbu and Bishop — with an automatic critical slip surface search.
SimScale Community Plan — The Complete Guide: Cloud CFD and FEA in the Browser, and Its Limits
SimScale runs CFD, structural and thermal analysis in the cloud from a browser. The Community plan is free but capped in compute hours; all projects are public.
TexGen — The Complete Guide: Free Geometric Modelling of Woven Textiles and Composites
TexGen from the University of Nottingham models woven fabrics and glass, carbon and aramid composites, and exports to ABAQUS, IGES and STEP for analysis.
CAELinux — The Complete Guide: A Free Linux Distribution With the Whole Engineering Simulation Toolbox
CAELinux is a Linux distribution that ships with Code_Aster, Salome, Elmer, OpenFOAM, CalculiX and ParaView installed and linked, and runs from a USB stick.
MBDyn — The Complete Guide: Free Multibody Dynamics, Including Flexible Bodies
MBDyn from Politecnico di Milano computes how connected bodies move over time: mechanisms, suspensions, drivetrains and rotors, rigid and flexible alike.
OpenRadioss — The Complete Guide: Free Industrial-Grade Crash, Impact and Blast Simulation
OpenRadioss is an open-source explicit FE solver for fast events: crash, impact, blast, drop and fracture. It also reads LS-DYNA input. How to work with it.
Netgen/NGSolve — The Complete Guide: Free Meshing and High-Order Finite Elements in Python
Netgen meshes and NGSolve solves with high-order elements, all from Python: solid mechanics, flow and electromagnetics, with high accuracy on coarse meshes.
MOOSE — The Complete Guide: The Free Multiphysics Framework From Idaho National Laboratory
MOOSE from Idaho National Laboratory couples heat, mechanics, chemistry and neutronics in one implicit solve and handles parallelism and solvers. Who it suits.
Kratos Multiphysics — The Complete Guide: A Free Multiphysics Framework for Structures, Flow and Particles
Kratos Multiphysics from CIMNE is an open FE framework: structures, fluids, particles (DEM) and fluid-structure interaction, all set up from Python.