1. Getting started

1.1. Installing OpenFCST

To help with configuring OpenFCST with CMake we have provide a configure script, i.e., openFCST_install.

For a typical installation, go to the fcst/ folder, and enter the following:

$./openFCST_install --cores=<number of cores> --install-dir=path_for_installation_directory

where the variable –cores allows you to compile the program using multiple CPUs and –install-dir allows you to specify the installation directory where openFCST will be installed. By default, openFCST will create an in-build installation the openfcst/ folder. Inside the openfcst/ folder, two new folders will appear

• Install
• Build

The folder Install contains the installation of the code. It contains a /bin folder where you will find the executable files for OpenFCST, i.e. fuel_cell-2d.bin and fuel_cell-3d.bin for 2D and 3D simulations, and the GUI file, i.e. fcst_gui. It also contains the folder examples where you will find several tutorials on how to run openFCST. The folder doc contains the HTML documentation for developers. The Build folder is the folder where all object files needed during compilation are installed. Users can ignore this folder.

For more options and information about the installation script type:

$./openFCST_install --help

1.1.1. System requirements

The following software needs to also be installed in your computer in order for FCST to compile:

1. GNU make and C++11 support, gcc version 4.7 or later (4.7.2 Recommended)
2. GCC
3. BLAS and LAPACK libraries
4. OpenMPI compiler
5. gfortran compiler
6. Bison
7. qt4-designer
8. For generating the documentation: DOxygen
9. Boost; the specific packages are iostreams, serialization, system, thread, filesystem, regex, signals, programoptions
10. FLEX (For Dakota)
11. Python Packages: SciPy, NumPy, ipython, Sphinx, evtk, vtk, mayavi

1.2. Setting up a simulation

The easiest way to start a simulation with OpenFCST is running the examples provided in the examples folder. Each example is a chapter in this user guide. Once you are comfortable running the examples, then you can use the GUI to modify different parameters to perform new simulations.

We recommend that you use the OpenFCST graphical user interface. To load the examples in the GUI, first you will need to create the .xml files that the GUI reads and then you will have to open them with the GUI. For an example see the Introduction to AppCathode tutorial