scope user manual

Scope displays meshes for computational fluid dynamics (CFD), structural analysis and is meant to support many common operations in the fields of flight dynamics and aeroelasticity.

Basic Concepts

Scope loads a variety of mesh file formats; all of these files contain discretized information, that is, data defined in terms of nodes (grid points) and elements; scope does not handle continuous geometry, such as, for example, surfaces defined in CAD systems adn stored in IGES or STEP files.

Meshes analysis functions allow to generate sectional views through volume meshes. Quality criteria can be evaluated in order to locate and highlight low-quality elements.

In many cases, scope will also import data fields associated with these meshes. Scalar fields can be displayed as color contours; vector fields can be turned into surface streamlines. Sectioning tools permit to generate XY-plots of surface data.

Originally, scope was implemented to support research in the field of aeroelasticity. It has since been used as a visualization and post-processing back-end for another solver and to support work on automatic mesh generation.

Examples

Map mesh deformation

Aeroelastic analyses regularly require that deformations of a structural model are translated to the wetted surface of a dissimilar aerodynamic mesh. Scope implements different algorithms which can deal with many industrially relevant cases with complex geometry and discontinuous displacements.

Generate flight loads

Different types of structural loads can be generated from one or a collection of aerodynamic solutions.

Convert mesh formats

Scope can be use simply to convert between mesh formats (say, from the format used for the DLR TAU solver to Stanford’s SU2 solver format), without the need to go through a commercial tool.

Scope is not Paraview

Scope does not attempt to replace Paraview, which is far more flexible and most likely more suitable for many applications. Instead, Scope will often be able to convert your analysis results to a file format readable by Paraview for further postprocessing.

State of Documentation

This user manual makes no claim to completeness; with time, some sections may become outdated or inaccurate. Contact the author if you would like to fund improved documentation.

License

Scope is available in source code form under the terms of the GNU Public License. Compiled versions are regularly updated for use on Mac OS X, Windows and some Linux distibutions.