TELEMAC version 6.0

The first freeware version, following a long history

The software suite Telemac, dedicated to free surface flows, has seen a growing success since 1993 and has been widely distributed throughout the world, with more than 200 licences and several hundreds of users.

 Telemac is used at EDF for dimensioning and impact studies, where safety is prevailing and, for this reason, reliability, validation and a worldwide recognition of our tools are of utmost importance. To meet these goals, and to improve access to Telemac for our partners, consultants, and to the whole community of researchers, EDF R&D has decided to move to freeware and open source. This important change has been achieved with the help of Telemac distributors, Sogreah and HR-Wallingford, and in full agreement with historical partners such as the Centre d’Etudes Techniques Maritimes et Fluviales (CETMEF, France) and BundesAnstalt für Wasserbau (BAW, Germany). EDF, the distributors and historical partners are the first members of a co-developers consortium that will steer Telemac developments. As the quality of assistance, maintenance and hotline support are also very important to professional users, a special effort is being made to offer a broad range of fee-paying services.

The new Telemac 6.0 version, with notable improvements and updated documentation, is now available.

All programmes now allow domain decomposition in parallel

 Telemac is distributed in two ways:

1)      through a list of distributors, along with fee-paying services for assistance. The full system including Telemac-3D is available through this route.

2)     by free download on this Website. This option is, to start with, limited to 2-dimensional tools: Telemac-2D (Shallow Water or Saint-Venant equations), Sisyphe (sediment transport), Tomawac (wave climate), Artemis (linear waves), along with user interfaces provided by partners such as CETMEF and NRC-Canadian Hydraulic Centre. Other pre- and post-processors like Rubens and Matisse (post-treatment and mesh generation) may be also provided on specific platforms.

Simulation of the Malpasset dam break flood wave in 1959, with a 26000 elements mesh (the run, 1000 time steps of 4 s, takes 10 s on an 8-core desktop computer)

 

 

Study of waves in the intake channel of a nuclear power plant 

 

Salinity in the Berre lagoon, with the fresh water outfall (in blue) from the Saint-Chamas power plant

 

A few technical details

 

Fortran 90 sources and test cases can be freely downloaded, with installation documentation, provided that you accept the principle of GNU GPL and LGPL distribution. We shall soon have all sources commented in English and all the documentation of version 6.0 will be available online.

We offer, to start with, the classical installation procedure that was used so far by all our partners, based on Perl scripts. A new version based on Python language, enabling an automatic installation, is being prepared.

So far virtually all Fortran compilers on Unix and Linux may be used, the compiling directives for a number of them are given. On Windows two free compilers: gfortran and g95, and a commercial compiler: Intel, have been secured. Others may be tested, probably at the cost of small modifications.

 

A new development dynamics

 

Within this new framework of distribution and steering, the development dynamics of Telemac remains more than ever our common goal. We believe that the Telemac user community and research in hydraulics will come out strengthened to the benefit of all.

 

To share your experience with all other users, we invite you to the:

 

Next Telemac User Club, on 14 and 15 October 2010.

 

It will be in La Rochelle, and it is…  free.