Code Saturne

Development of code_saturne began in 1997 within EDF's R&D division as an internal tool for nuclear safety studies and thermohydraulics of nuclear power plants.^[3]

In March 2007, EDF released the code under the GNU General Public License, adopting an open development model.^[4] This release encouraged adoption by industrial and academic partners in France and internationally.

The software has since been selected as a benchmark application within the European PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) project for evaluating supercomputer performance.^[3]

code_saturne solves the Navier–Stokes equations using a co-located finite volume method. It accepts meshes of any type — structured, unstructured, hybrid, conforming or non-conforming — and a variety of cell shapes: tetrahedra, hexahedra, prisms, pyramids, or arbitrary polyhedra.^[1]

Simulated flows can be steady or unsteady, laminar or turbulent, isothermal or non-isothermal, and incompressible or compressible.^[3]

The software provides a wide range of turbulence models covering the following approaches:

• RANS (Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes);
• LES (Large Eddy Simulation);
• hybrid RANS/LES methods (DES, SAS).

In addition to the general-purpose solver, code_saturne includes dedicated modules for specific physics:^[1]

• Combustion: gas flames (diffusion, premixed), pulverised coal combustion with Lagrangian particle tracking, and fire simulation;
• Thermal radiation: radiative transfer in semi-transparent media;
• Atmospheric flows: atmospheric boundary layer, thermal stratification, pollutant dispersion;
• Lagrangian particle tracking: transport of particles, droplets or bubbles in an Eulerian field with two-way coupling;
• Magnetohydrodynamics: coupling of the Navier–Stokes and Maxwell equations;
• Turbomachinery: rotating meshes with sliding mesh interfaces.

The code is parallelised using the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library, enabling it to run on high-performance computing (HPC) architectures.^[3] It can be coupled with the solid thermal code SYRTHES and the structural mechanics code code_aster, notably through the SALOME platform.

code_saturne supports various mesh types, including arbitrary polyhedral and non-structured elements, with non-conforming mesh joining. It does not include a built-in mesher or visualisation module, but is compatible with many standard tools and formats.^[5]

Supported mesh import formats:

Post-processing output formats:

• MED
• CGNS
• EnSight Gold

code_saturne is used in both industrial and academic settings in France and internationally. Approximately 500 engineers and researchers use it within EDF.^[3]

Originally designed for nuclear power plant safety studies, the software is used to analyse flows in primary circuits, cooling systems, coupled fluid-structure heat transfer, and steam generators. It is also employed for modelling wind farms, including turbine wake interactions and layout optimisation.^[3]

The software is used for modelling atmospheric flows, pollutant dispersion, air quality assessment, and wind-structure interactions.^[3]

code_saturne has been used by industrial partners for hydrodynamics applications, notably in the field of naval architecture.^[6]

The software is used in universities and research organisations for developing and validating numerical models, as well as for teaching computational fluid dynamics.

Development is led by the R&D division of EDF. The source code is hosted on GitHub.^[7] Releases follow regular cycles.

A community of users, including engineers and researchers from industry and academia, contributes to the project through the development of physical models, associated tools, and validation cases. An official forum^[8] and technical documentation (user guides, reference manuals, tutorial cases) are available on the project website.

The numerical foundations and validation of code_saturne are described in several peer-reviewed publications:

• Archambeau, F.; Méchitoua, N.; Sakiz, M. (2004). "Code_saturne: A finite volume code for the computation of turbulent incompressible flows – Industrial applications". International Journal on Finite Volumes. 1 (1).
• Fournier, Y.; Bonelle, J.; Moulinec, C.; Shang, Z.; Sunderland, A.G.; Uribe, J.C. (2011). "Optimizing Code_Saturne computations on Petascale systems". Computers & Fluids. 45 (1): 103–108. doi:10.1016/j.compfluid.2011.01.028.

code_saturne runs on Linux and Unix. It is available as pre-compiled packages for distributions such as Debian and Ubuntu, through container images (Docker, Singularity), or by compiling from source available on the official website.^[9]

Pre-compiled binaries and Singularity (.sif) and Docker container images are also provided by the Open Simulation Center platform,^[10] facilitating deployment on workstations or high-performance computing environments.

On Windows, the software can be used through the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

• code_aster
• SALOME
• Computational fluid dynamics
• OpenFOAM
• Finite volume method