Installation¶

Requirements¶

Component	Version	Used for
Python	3.9 or newer	everything
Cantera	3.0 or newer	thermodynamic and transport data of the frozen mixture
CEA_Wrap	2.1 or newer	calling NASA CEA
NumPy, SciPy, PyYAML	any recent	numerics and input files
OpenFOAM (openfoam.com)	tested with v2606	running the generated case
Matplotlib	optional	the figure of `ceatofoam sweep --plot`

The Python dependencies are installed by pip. OpenFOAM is needed only to run the case, not to write it.

Installing ceaToFoam¶

git clone https://github.com/MCF2-Lab/ceaToFoam.git
cd ceaToFoam
pip install .              # or: pip install '.[plot]' to include Matplotlib

A virtual environment keeps the dependencies separate from the system Python:

python3 -m venv ~/venvs/ceatofoam
. ~/venvs/ceatofoam/bin/activate
pip install '.[plot]'

The CEA executable on Linux and macOS¶

CEA_Wrap ships the CEA executable for Windows only. On Linux and macOS, compile the Fortran source that comes with it once (gfortran is enough) and tell CEA_Wrap where the executable is:

ASSETS=$(python3 -c "import CEA_Wrap, os; print(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(CEA_Wrap.__file__), 'assets'))")
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin && cd "$ASSETS"
gfortran -O2 -std=legacy -o ~/.local/bin/Dan_CEA2 dan_cea2.f
export CEA_EXE_LOCATION=~/.local/bin/Dan_CEA2    # add to ~/.bashrc

Run the command in the environment where ceaToFoam is installed, so that python3 finds CEA_Wrap.

Checking the installation¶

ceatofoam --version
ceatofoam design examples/rp1-lox-500psi.yaml
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests

The design command prints the chamber state and the design point of the example engine (see Usage). Tests that need the CEA executable or OpenFOAM are skipped when these are not available; with both present, all tests run, including blockMesh and checkMesh on a generated case.