This section describes the physical models implemented in TrioCFD.

TrioCFD is an open-source software [34] for simulations in fluid mechanics, particularly suited to massively parallel computations of turbulent flows in industrial configurations. It has existed since the mid-1990s (and the work on Finite-Element Volumes in [48]) and has found applications in several subdomains of fluid mechanics.

Many references available in the literature (including 28 PhD theses) describe the numerical methods of the code or original applications. These references (theses and articles) can be found in PDF format on the website [34]. This documentation complements the qualitative description of the website by specifying the mathematical models used in the simulations. Given the diversification of applications since 1992, the description is restricted to single-phase, Newtonian, incompressible and turbulent flows. For this type of flow, many details are already available in several references including [5], [6] and [34]. This documentation initiates a synthesis of the existing literature, while also homogenising the notations between the "physical models" and the "numerical methods" parts, which are often the subject of different notations across documents.

Two main discretization methods can be used in TrioCFD: the Finite-Element Volume (VEF) method and the Finite-Difference Volume (VDF) method. For VEF, the associated meshes must necessarily be triangular (in 2D) or tetrahedral (in 3D). The code is written in C++ and is based on the TRUST software platform, in which the full set of numerical methods and discretization schemes used in TrioCFD is notably implemented. TrioCFD relies on TRUST, but this documentation only concerns the TrioCFD part.

Note: This documentation is being progressively expanded. Several updates are planned to extend it little by little to the full set of models available in the code, illustrated by some of the ~200 validation reports of the TrioCFD validation base (see Appendix A of the validation report).