VLM

This Vortex Lattice Method code is a 3D unsteady aerodynamics solver relying on potential flow theory.

Building and testing

Dependencies

The code requires:

• CMake
• a C compiler (GCC, MSVC and Clang are supported)

Additionally, the code is wrapped in python. For the wrapper to be enabled, the code following dependencies are also required:

• SWIG
• Python 3
• NumPy
• geoGen Note that geoGen should be located in a folder next to VLM.

Aptitude-based linux systems (Debian, Ubuntu)

Dependencies under Linux can be resolved by the Aptitude package manager.

sudo apt-get install git
sudo apt-get install cmake
# additional dependencies for python wrapper
sudo apt-get install python3 python3-dev libpython3-dev
sudo apt-get install python3-numpy
sudo apt-get install swig
git clone https://github.com/acrovato/geoGen # should be located next to VLM

OS X

Dependencies under MacOS can be resolved by the Homebrew package manager.

brew install git
brew install cmake
# additional dependencies for python wrapper
brew install python
brew install numpy
brew install swig
git clone https://github.com/acrovato/geoGen # should be located next to VLM

Windows

Windows does not feature a package manager by default. You will need to install or compile all the dependencies by yourself. Please refer to the documention of each package. Note however that CMake is usually bundled with Visual Studio 2017 and later.
Yet another option is to use MSYS2 which provides a Linux-like environment. MSYS2 comes with the package manager pacman.

pacman -S git
pacman -S make
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-tools-git
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc
# additional dependencies for python wrapper
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-swig
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-python3
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-python3-numpy
git clone https://github.com/acrovato/geoGen # should be located next to VLM

Build and test

The build follows the standard "configure-compile-test" pattern. First, get the code using git and enter the directory:

git clone https://github.com/ulgltas/VLM
cd VLM

Unix(-like) environments

For native Unix systems (Linux, OSX) simply open a terminal:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake [-DPYTHON_WRAPPER=OFF] ..
make
make install
ctest

For MSYS2, open a MSYS2-MINGW64 console:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -C ../CMake/msys2.cmake [-DPYTHON_WRAPPER=OFF] ..
make
make install
ctest

Native Windows

Compiling the code without the Python wrapper is relatively straightforward. Make sure to disable the Python wrapper before running CMake, with option -DPYTHON_WRAPPER=OFF. In order to use the wrapper, you also need to change the configuration to RELEASE and to provide CMake with the paths to Python and SWIG. The latter can be done by modifying the configurations:

"cmakeCommandArgs": "-DSWIG_EXECUTABLE=C:\\PATH\\TO\\swig.exe -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=C:\\PATH\\TO\\python.exe"

Running the code

By default the program is installed in the bin subdirectory and can be called with

bin/VLM path/to/input/file

If using the Python wrapper

python3 run.py path/to/input/file

This will automatically create its own workspace folder.