Component-Based Development of CFD Software FUN3D

Component-Based Development of CFD Software FUN3D

FUN3D, a suite of Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation and design tools developed at the NASA Langley Research Center, has undergone continuous development since the late1980s. It contains a large portion of legacy code. Extending it with new capabilities becomes increasingly difficult. To improve the extensibility and reusability, FUN3D is moving toward component-based development. New features, such as Stabilized Finite Elements, Yoga, and Sparse Linear Algebra Toolkit, are integrated into the system as components. Some existing features such as the Node-Centered Finite Volume Solver, are also being refactored to components. The integration of these components poses new requirements on the development workflow. In this paper, we describe the Continuous Integration of FUN3D to support component-based development, and discuss the tools used, the practices followed, and lessons learned during the transition from the traditional approach.