Paer

PAer, short for Parallel Aerodynamics Engine, is an open-source software library designed for high-performance computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with emphasis on aerospace applications. It provides scalable solvers for both incompressible and compressible flows on distributed-memory computer systems and is intended as a research and teaching platform as well as a basis for production codes in academia and industry.

Architecture and capabilities: PAer is implemented in C++ with Python bindings to facilitate rapid prototyping. It supports unstructured and block-structured meshes and relies on the finite volume method with a range of time-stepping schemes. The core solver framework is modular, allowing researchers to swap turbulence models, discretization orders, and mesh adapters without rewriting code. Parallelization is achieved through MPI, with optional GPU acceleration in experimental builds. The project also includes mesh generation utilities and simple post-processing tools.

Development and license: PAer began as a collaboration among several universities in the early 2010s and has since grown into a community-driven project. It is distributed under a permissive open-source license, enabling academic and commercial use subject to attribution. Documentation, tutorials, and example cases are maintained in an online repository, and user contributions are reviewed through a public workflow.

Applications and impact: The software is used for research in aerospace design, rotorcraft aerodynamics, and wind-energy simulations, as well as for classroom demonstrations in CFD courses. While it competes with larger packages, PAer serves as a lightweight, extensible platform for method development and educational purposes. See also: Computational fluid dynamics, OpenFOAM, SU2.