Turbulenter

Turbulenter is a software framework for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) designed to simulate and analyze turbulent flows. It provides a modular toolkit that supports a range of turbulence modeling approaches, from direct numerical simulation to various Reynolds-averaged and hybrid methods, and emphasizes scalability, portability, and reproducibility.

The project was initiated in the early 2010s by a consortium of researchers from academic institutions and national laboratories. It was released as an open-source project under a permissive license in 2016, with ongoing development by a global community of contributors and maintainers. A major architecture update in 2020 introduced a unified Python API and improved GPU acceleration.

Turbulenter's core separates mesh handling, numerical solvers, and turbulence models. It supports structured, unstructured, and adaptive meshes, high-order discretization, MPI-based parallelism, and GPU backends via CUDA or OpenCL. It includes built-in turbulence models (e.g., LES, RANS, DNS workflows), a Python interface for preprocessing and postprocessing, and adapters for common data formats and visualization tools.

The framework is used in academic research to study fundamental turbulence physics, as well as in engineering practice for aerospace, automotive, and environmental applications. It is also used in education to teach CFD concepts. The project aims to foster collaboration and reproducible research through open data and standardized test cases.