Software

DAFoam: Discrete Adjoint with OpenFOAM for High-fidelity Multidisciplinary Design Optimization

The iDesign Lab has been developing the DAFoam framework. DAFoam develops an efficient discrete adjoint method to perform high-fidelity multidisciplinary design optimization. DAFoam has the following features: [Code] [Documentation] [Paper]

• It uses a popular open-source package OpenFOAM for multiphysics analysis.
• It implements a Jacobian-free discrete adjoint approach with competitive speed, scalability, and accuracy.
• It has a convenient Python interface to couple with OpenMDAO for multidisciplinary design optimization.

As of July 2025, DAFoam has been used in 36 external publications by researchers across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Each of these publications explicitly acknowledges the use of DAFoam in MDO research and applications for aircraft, automobiles, wind turbines, and medical devices. A full list of these publications can be found here.

The DAFoam project began in 2016, when Dr. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the MDO Lab at the University of Michigan. DAFoam became open-source in 2019, and Dr. He and his team have continued to develop and expand its capabilities at Iowa State University. (Check out Dr. He’s custom DAFoam license plate in the picture below!)

We gratefully acknowledge The Ford Motor Company for initially sponsoring the DAFoam project, and thank NSF and NASA for their continued funding support in advancing DAFoam’s capabilities.