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Release notes

The format used for this changelog is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning. Notice that until the package reaches version v1.0.0 minor releases are likely to be breaking. Starting from version v0.3.1 breaking changes will be recorded here.

Version v0.5.1 - 2025-07-03

Added

  • New Empty boundary condition allowing 2D simulations with OpenFOAM 2D-compatible grids#63
  • Tests for the Smagorinsky LES model have been included #63

Fixed

  • No fixes included

Changed

  • Transient simulation results for VTK and VTU files use the format time_<iteration> #63

Breaking

  • No breaking changes

Deprecated

  • No functions deprecated

Removed

  • No functionality has been removed

Version v0.5.0 - 2025-06-28

Added

  • New boundary conditions Extrapolated and Zerogradient have been added. Both assign a zero gradient boundary condition, however, their implementation differs. Extrapolated assigns the zero gradient condition semi-implicitly (using the cell centre unknown and the cell centre value from the previous iteration). Zerogradient assigns the gradient in the boundary faces explicitly #61
  • The workgroup size for the CPU backend can now be automatically chosen when workgroup=AutoTune(). This uses a simple ceiling division internally where the number of elements in the kernel are divided by the number of available threads. This results in a small 10% performance gain #61

Fixed

  • Fixed the implementation for the calculation of the wall distance to work on GPUs #49
  • The new approach for handling user-provided boundary conditions now allows extracting the wall velocity specified by the user for the Wall boundary condition #61

Changed

  • In the calculation of wall function properties the user-provided wall velocity is now used, instead of hard-coded to no-slip #49
  • The functions set_production!, set_cell_value! and correct_nut_wall!, in RANS_functions.jl have been updated, removing conditional branch used in the generated calling them. Now these functions use multiple dispatch to allow specialising the wall function framework to ease the development of new wall functions #57
  • New NeumannFunction has been created, mirroring the DirichletFunction, providing a Neumann boundary condition defined with a user-provided struct (a generic framework accepting a function to set the gradient at the boundary is not yet available) #57
  • update_user_boundary function, extension has been reverted, overwriting the changes made to expose the ModelEquation type to it in #55
  • User-provided boundary conditions are no longer stored within fields, instead a NamedTuple is constructed using the function assign, which is passed to solvers using the Configuration struct.
  • Configuration setting provided by the user at the top-level API are now stored in predefined structs, instead of using NamedTuples, this change should put less pressure on the compiler #61
  • Internally, kernel launches have been updated to use a static NDrange. This resulted in a 20% speed improvement on GPU backends (only NVidia GPUs tested) #61

Breaking

  • The definition of Krylov solvers in the previous API used types exported directly from Krylov.jl. Now solvers are defined using instances of types defined in XCALibre.jl. As an example, previously the CG solver was defined using the type CgSolver now this solver is defined using the instance Cg() where the suffix "Solver" has been dropped. This applies to all previously available solver choices #60
  • The Green-Gauss method for calculating the gradient is now Gauss which is more descriptive than the previous name Orthogonal
  • The internals for handling user-provided boundary conditions have been updated in preparation for extending the code for handling multiple regions. Thus, the syntax for assigning boundary conditions has changed. The most noticeable change is the removal of the the @assign! macro, replaced by the function assign. See the documentation for details #61
  • The set_solver, set_hardware and set_runtime top-level functions have been replaced with SolverSetup, Hardware and Runtime structures. This allowed storing user-provided setup information in structs instead of NamedTuples to reduce the burden on the compiler #61
  • The implementation of the FixedTemperature boundary condition has been simplified, resulting in a breaking change. The definition of the boundary condition now requires users to provide an Enthalphy model. This interface should make it easier to extend the current implementation to new forms of the energy equation #61

Deprecated

  • No functions deprecated

Removed

  • The functions set_solver, set_runtime, set_hardware and the macro @assign! have been removed/replaced #61

Version v0.4.2 - 2025-04-02

Added

  • A very simple 2D block mesh generator has been added (not ready for general use as it needs to be documented)#41
  • Implementation of Wall boundary conditions specialised for ScalarField #45
  • Simulation results can now be written to VTK and OpenFOAM formats. The format can be selected using the output keyword argument in the run! function. The formats available are VTK() and OpenFOAM() #47

Fixed

  • Fixed the implementation for the calculation of the wall distance #45

Changed

  • In preparation for hybrid RANS/LES models, the object Turbulence is now passed to the TurbulenceModel object to allow for a more general call of turbulence!. This changes the implementation of turbulence! for all models slightly #46
  • Improved stability on meshes with warped faces by changing how face normals are calculated. XCALibre now uses an area-weighted face normal calculation based on the decomposition of faces into triangles #47
  • Removed VTK module and moved functionality to a new IOFormats module #47
  • Internally the function model2vtk has been replaced with save_output within all solvers. The specialisation for writing ModelPhysics models to file has also changed to save_output. The arguements pass to this function have also changed, the name of the file is not passed to the function, instead, the current runtime variable time is required #47
  • The Momentum object, part of the ModelPhysics object, now includes the FaceScalarField and FaveVectorField in addition to existing fields in preparation for non-uniform boundary definition when using the OpenFOAM output format #47

Breaking

  • No breaking changes

Deprecated

  • No functions deprecated

Removed

  • No functionality has been removed

Version v0.4.1 - 2025-03-06

Added

  • No new functionality has been added

Fixed

  • Remove fragile precompile statements of the form var"#*#*" causing errors in Julia v1.12 #40

Changed

  • In preparation for implementation of hybrid models e.g. DES, the signature of the turbulence! function has been updated to use the AbstractTurbulenceModel #39
  • New semi-implicit implementation for periodic boundary conditions (implicit treatment of laplacian terms)#40

Breaking

  • No breaking changes

Deprecated

  • No functions deprecated

Removed

  • No functionality has been removed

Version v0.4.0 - 2025-02-17

Added

  • Implementation of Symmetry boundary condition for ScalarField types #30
  • New macro to help define boundary conditions that will dispatch to Scalar or VectorField types #30
  • Added eltype method for both Scalar and VectorField types to simplify the development of new kernels where type information is needed #30
  • New gradient limiters FaceBased and MFaceBased for limiting gradients based on cell faces, where MFaceBased is a multidimensional version, and it is generally recommended over FaceBased #30
  • Support for INTEL hardware #32

Fixed

  • Calling JacobiSmoother now works on the GPU #30
  • Implemented SparseXCSR as wrapper for SparseMatrixCSR on the CPU to resolve display/print errors #30
  • The convergence criteria for solvers is used consistently to stop/control simulation runtime #36
  • Consistent display of residuals on screen during simulations #36
  • Fixed calculation of wall distance and apply_boundary_conditions! arguments for LKE model #36

Changed

  • The calculation of gradients has been improved by merging computations into a single kernel, improving performance of gradient kernels by around 10-30%, most noticable for vector gradients #30
  • Improved calculation of non-orthogonal calculation (more tests are still needed), although tests have proven to be stable #30
  • Improved documentation/readme on supported GPU backends/hardware and make users aware of potential F32 limitation on some hardware

Breaking

  • The top level API for all solvers no longer takes the keyword argument limit_gradient for activating gradient limiter. New gradient limiters have been added and can be selected/configured when assigning numerical schemes with the Schemes function #30

Deprecated

  • No functions deprecated

Removed

  • No functionality has been removed

Version v0.3.3 - 2024-12-24

Added

  • Added experimental support for NVIDIA ILU0 and IC0 preconditioners #23
  • Added JacobiSmoother that can be used with all linear solvers (improving initial guess) #23
  • New function activate_multithread is available to set up matrix-vector multiplication in parallel on the CPU
  • Initial benchmark added in the documentation

Fixed

  • No fixes

Changed

  • Internally the sparse matrix format has been changed to CSR. This has improved performance by 2x-4x (case dependent)
  • Multithreaded sparse matrix vector multiplication is now functional #23
  • Precompilation errors on Julia v1.11 addressed by bringing code from ThreadedSparseCSR.jl #24
  • Update compat entry for Atomix.jl to v1.0,0 #24
  • DILU preconditioner is now implemented to work with sparse matrices in CSR format and uses a hybrid approach (running on CPU) to allow working when using GPU backends (further work needed) #26
  • The implementation of RANS models and wall functions has been improved for consistency (resulting in some computational gains). The calculation of yPlusLam is only done once when constructing the wall function objects. The calculation of the velocity gradient is now only done within the turbulence model main function (turbulence!) #28

Breaking

  • No breaking changes

Deprecated

  • No functions deprecated

Removed

  • The ILU0 and LDL preconditioners has been temporarily removed #23

Version v0.3.2 - 2024-11-08

Added

  • Added support for CI testing, Dependabot, and CompatHelper

Fixed

  • Fixed tests for mesh conversion and standardised tolerances for test checks of incompressible solvers #16

Changed

  • No changes

Breaking

  • No breaking changes

Deprecated

  • No functions deprecated

Removed

  • No functionality has been removed

Version v0.3.1 - 2024-10-18

Added

  • Vastly improved documentation with new examples provided #12
  • Changelog added to record changes more clearly. Record kept in Release notes

Fixed

  • The calculation of gradients can be limited for stability. This functionality can be activated by passing the key work argument limit_gradient to the run! function. The implementation has been improved for robustness #12
  • Removed face information being printed when Mesh objects are created to stop printing a ERROR: Scalar indexing is disallowed message #13

Changed

  • Master branch protected and requires PRs to push changes

Breaking

  • No breaking changes

Deprecated

  • No functions deprecated

Removed

  • No functionality has been removed

Version v0.3.0 - 2024-09-21

  • New name - XCALibre.jl - which is now registered in the General Julia registry
  • Can do 3D and GPU accelerated simulations
  • Can read .unv and OpenFOAM mesh files (3D)
  • Can do incompressible and compressible simulations
  • RANS and LES models available
  • User-provided functions or neural networks for boundary conditions
  • Reasonably complete "user" documentation now provided
  • Made repository public (in v0.2 the work was kept in a private repository and could only do 2D simulations)
  • Tidy up mesh type definitions by @mberto79 in #5
  • Adapt code base to work with new mesh format by @mberto79 in #6
  • Mesh boundary struct changes PR by @TomMazin in #7
  • Mesh boundary struct changes PR fix by @TomMazin in #8

Version v0.2.0 - 2023-01-23

  • New mesh format and type implemented that are GPU friendly.
  • No functionality changes

Version v0.1.0 - 2023-01-23

Initial release

2D implementation of classic incompressible solvers for laminar and turbulent flows:

  • Framework for equation definition
  • SIMPLE nad PISO algorithms
  • Read UNV meshes in 2D
  • Capability for RANS models
  • Various discretisation schemes available
  • Planned extension to 3D and GPU acceleration!