Cantera 2.4.0#

Published on August 24, 2018 | Full release on GitHub

Cantera 2.4.0 includes more than 380 commits to the code since 2.3.0, merges more than 70 pull requests, and closes almost 60 issues. In this release, we improved the maintainability of Cantera by removing or deprecating old, untested code, moving the website and Mixmaster to separate repositories, and automating more of the build/testing process. We also added new features to the 1-D reactor code (among other areas), including adding an ionized gas transport class and the IonFlow and BurnerIonFlame classes, providing better accessing to callbacks during 1-D solutions, and automatically detecting certain common failure conditions of the 1-D solver. This release of Cantera was made possible by contributions from 14 developers: @speth, @bryanwweber, @BangShiuh, @decaluwe, @wandadars, @jsantner, @arghdos, @rwest, @g3bk47, @awehrfritz, @band-a-prend, @vdevgan, @KyleLinevitchJr, and @MarcDuQuesne.

For installation and compilation instructions for Cantera 2.4.0, please see the directions on the Cantera website. In addition to Conda packages, Windows installers, and Ubuntu packages, this release also features the addition of a pre-compiled Matlab toolbox for macOS users, replacing Homebrew as the prefered method of installing Cantera for Matlab on macOS.

Thanks to a small development grant from NumFOCUS (see more about NumFOCUS below), @bryanwweber and @decaluwe reorganized and restyled the Cantera website. The website has moved to a separate repository, allowing the website content to be updated without modifications to the main Cantera source code. We also tried to make it easy for all of our users to find what they’re looking for quickly, from installation instructions and tutorials for beginners, to advanced examples and API documentation for experienced Cantera programmers. The new website also redirects all traffic to HTTPS, ensuring a secure experience for everyone.

Cantera is now officially part of NumFOCUS. NumFOCUS is a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to supporting the open source scientific computing community. If you are interested in learning more about NumFOCUS, please visit their website at https://numfocus.org, or our website at https://cantera.org/community.html#donations.

Cantera 2.4.0 is the last release that will be compatible with Python 2.7. Support for Python 2.7 from the Python Software Foundation will end January 1, 2020. Given the recent release cadence of Cantera, the next major version of Cantera will probably be released very close to that date, so we have made the decision to drop Python 2.7 support for Cantera 2.5.0 and higher.

One notable change to the build requirements for Cantera 2.4.0 is that SCons 3.0.0 or higher must be used to compile the source code. This means that either Python 2 or Python 3 can be used to run SCons. In addition, there are now three options to handle building the Python interface, depending on whether the user wants to build for Python 2 or Python 3. Please check the documentation or run scons help for more information.

Summary of changes in Cantera 2.4.0#

Bugs fixed#

  • Fix inconsistencies and bugs in several ThermoPhase derived classes, including PDSS_IdealGas, IonsFromNeutralVPSSTP, PDSS_IonsFromNeutral, PDSS_HKFT, LatticePhase, PDSS_SSVol, ConstDensityThermo, and PureFluidPhase

  • Preserve constant property pair when multiplying Quantity objects

  • Fix using pure fluids in reactors

  • Add temperature dependence of rotational relaxation in transport calculations

  • Disable linking to external SUNDIALS libraries when building the Matlab toolbox

Changes to existing capabilities#

  • Allow instantiation of ThermoPhase derived classes without XML

  • set_equivalence_ratio now supports sulfur oxidation

  • Make all complex object types (ThermoPhase, Kinetics, Transport, Reactor, Domain1D, etc.) objects non-copyable

  • Deprecate FreeFlow and AxiStagnFlow classes by moving the relevant functions into the StFlow class

  • Allow convertMech function to be called multiple times

  • Remove the requirement for users to have Boost headers installed when building against the Cantera library

  • Change the options to build the Python interface, since SCons can be run by Python 3

  • Update GTest, fmtlib, SUNDIALS, and Eigen submodule versions

Additions#

  • Add ion gas transport model, and IonFlow and BurnerIonFlame flame classes

  • Add C++ OpenMP, Non-Ideal Shock Tube, PSR/WSR, and time-dependent mass flow rate examples

  • Add class AnyMap

  • Allow negative reaction orders

  • Add unity Lewis number transport model

  • Add electron to the built-in elements

  • Add get_equivalence_ratio function

Full Changelog#

Bugs fixed#

Thermo/Species/Elements#

  • Fix issues parsing composition strings with mixtures of commas, colons, and spaces (3f6f580b)

  • Fix setting mass/mole fractions of phases with only a single species (ed8de04e)

  • Fix reference state calculations (38d291c6, 7b529ac2)

  • Fix test failures due to inconsistent species addition order (11a0727d, #433)

  • Fix errors in entropy calculation in PDSS_IdealGas (dfb32f0c)

  • Fix and test creation of IonsFromNeutralVPSSTP objects (3a119381)

  • Fix inconsistencies in PDSS_IonsFromNeutral (ff46dc93)

  • Fix PDSS_HKFT initialization when only one property is given (2c3512c2)

  • Fix default molar volume in LatticePhase (f3ba29f0)

  • Setting the composition with an empty array raises an exception (8a4142d4)

  • Fix implementation and documentation of PDSS_SSVol (ee663c9b, a19b2bd4, 286217d1, be8e51d2)

  • Fix definition of ConstDensityThermo::standardConcentration (89fded32, #458, #490)

  • Preserve constant property pair when multiplying Quantity objects (c9b0bce8)

  • Fix PureFluidPhase state data consistency (fb68cae1, 0417d31d)

Kinetics#

Transport#

0-D Reactors#

1-D Flames#

  • Fix handling of domain boundary conditions when the energy equation is not solved (52dbe8c0)

  • Fix handling of Soret diffusion enabling/disabling with respect to mixture-averaged diffusion approximation (a03afbd5, 4bd5e926, fde50511, #511)

CTI/Input files#

  • Fix file size limit when converting CTI to CTML (0a1257da, #416, #430)

  • Fix for reactions with pathologically named third bodies (55a89106, 6d591b82, 44b24ca8, #460)

  • ctml_writer is more tolerant of non-ASCII characters (0c0a38d4)

  • Fix incorrect entry in nasathermo.dat (3933a943, #491)

  • Fix writing surface reactions to the CTI file when there are no gas-phase reactions (552ba97a)

  • Fix over-zealous detection of new input file sections (f47e98a5)

  • Detect badly-formatted values of the 4th Troe coefficient (bde6e054)

  • Suppress some output when quiet=True (70016b97)

  • Fix duplicate key check in parseCompString (d0916171, #525)

  • Fix spurious unexpected output warnings (fd57936b)

Examples#

Other#

Changes to existing capabilities#

Thermo/Species/Elements#

Equilibrium Solvers#

Transport#

  • Allow construction of Transport derived classes without XML (4b5af640, 7020fa72)

  • Move simpleTransport test to GTest suite (4934079d)

0-D Reactors#

  • Make all reactor-related objects non-copyable (d9418bb8)

1-D Flames#

CTI/XML/Input Files#

  • Make searches for child nodes case insensitive (1bd950fe)

  • Improve error messages for invalid (floating point) geometry flags (6bf74d17, #446, #454)

Examples/Samples#

  • Remove verbose output from f77 demo wrapper (172e9ffe)

Documentation#

Other#

Additions#

Thermo/Species/Elements#

  • Allow synonyms for Factory model names (c28ca48c)

  • Add electron to the built-in elements (974bbc7d, #443)

  • Identify unspecified electrochemical reactions (04be9888, #452)

  • Make activity coefficients and activities available (a5b0bdf6)

  • Add regression tests for some thermo classes (338b2169)

  • Create a default constructor for PDSS objects and avoid unnecessary arguments in the initializers (04cac2b2)

  • Show values in setDensity/setTemperature exceptions (ebc478f8)

  • Add Cython function to access species viscosity (cc93ce62, #527)

  • Add get_equivalence_ratio function (a9ad75e9, #521)

  • Add newSubstance method to create pure fluid objects by name (62c67e4a)

  • Allow surface_reactions (not just edge_reactions) to be charge transfer reactions (51f419fb, #439)

Transport#

1-D Flames#

CTI/Input files#

Other#

Examples/Samples#