help open-source project: one-dimensional mathematical engine modeling

[burdickjp]

I've been digging into Gordon P. Blair's "Design and Simulation of Four-Stroke Engines" for about 18 months now. I've been translating the formulas into Python, and have decided to expand it into an open-source one-dimensional engine modeling program. I'd like some help with it! It's on sourceforge:
https://sourceforge.net/p/openenginesim/wiki/Home/

I've been working on it rather regularly, and hope to have the kinematics portion finished before the start of fall semester.

[mmw2753]

What is your motivation for doing this? Ricardo gives free 1D licenses to FSAE teams, as well as GT power I believe.

[burdickjp]

While free (as in beer) software is good, it's not ideal. In an application like mathematical modelling having transparent code is advantageous.
I believe in free (as in speech) software, and had been looking for something which would be interesting, challenging, and allow me to learn more programming. I've been using Python in a few things, like Sage Mathematics (if you haven't found Sage Math, you need to go look it up). I really think this is something which could grow, and has a lot of potential.

[Flight909]

I think this sounds like a good idea! I want to learn more about engine and how to design them. How could I start using this, are there a tutorial?

[P. Jayaraman]

Originally posted by mmw2753:
What is your motivation for doing this? Ricardo gives free 1D licenses to FSAE teams, as well as GT power I believe.

As far as I recall, Gamma Technologies (makers of GT Power) don't quite give their software out for free. Rather, they give you a one-seat, one-year license for a small nominal fee. Although not free, it's massively helpful considering what you can get done with it and what it would normally cost.

Nonetheless, putting together a transparent tool in Python is a terrific idea, especially from an educational perspective.

[burdickjp]

The sourceforge page has a forum!
I'm looking at interfacing with OpenFOAM for CFD calculation. I've been told trying to do it all natively in Python will be to slow.

[burdickjp]

Originally posted by Flight909:
I think this sounds like a good idea! I want to learn more about engine and how to design them. How could I start using this, are there a tutorial?

I would pick up a copy of Gordon P. Blair's "Design and Simulation of Four-Stroke Engines"

[carbon_black]

I've been told trying to do it all natively in Python will be to slow.

Not to distract from the main topic, but ignore this. Python has a strong scientific focus and performance is fine. Especially if you are leveraging the libraries which come with SAGE. This is not an issue.

If you would like to attract more contributors, you may want to read up on PEP8 though.

[burdickjp]

I had posted this to speedtalk. In some ways this was a good idea, as I was given a really good project outline to start into. In others it was bad. There are several posters there who were very pessimistically critical of open source projects, python as the primary development language, and the idea as a whole.
I will be starting a project outline on the site wiki. I'm excited to have an outline to follow.
I'm still certain this isn't something I will be able to tackle alone. I'm especially wanting help with the GUI, as I know I won't be able to implement the quality of GUI I'd expect as an end-user.
Even if you're just interested in following along, add the blog to your RSS feed, contact me. Start some feedback in the forum. set -s script to email me "keep it up!" every 72-96 hours or so.
I'm excited to do this, but it is big. I will need help if it will ever amount to anything substantial, which I think it can!