CFD General Notation System (CGNS)

The CFD General Notation System (CGNS) provides a general, portable, and extensible standard for the storage and retrieval of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis data. It consists of a collection of conventions, and free and open software implementing those conventions. It is self-descriptive, machine-independent, well-documented, and administered by an international steering committee. It is also an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Recommended Practice.
The system consists of two parts: (1) a standard format for recording the data, and (2) software that reads, writes, and modifies data in that format.  The format is a conceptual entity established by the documentation; the software is a physical product supplied to enable developers to access and produce data recorded in that format.

The CGNS system is designed to facilitate the exchange of data between sites and applications, and to help stabilize the archiving of aerodynamic data.  The data are stored in a compact, binary format and are accessible through a complete and extensible library of functions.  The API (Application Program Interface) is platform independent and can be easily implemented in C, C++, Fortran and Fortran90 applications.

How can CGNS help you?

It improves the longevity (archival quality) of data
It makes it easier to share data files between sites and collaborators
It is easily extendible to include almost any type of additional data you can think of
The CGNS project originated in 1994 as a joint effort between Boeing and NASA, and has since grown to include many other contributing organizations worldwide. In 1999, control of CGNS was completely transferred to a public forum known as the CGNS Steering Committee. This Steering Committee is made up of international representatives from government and private industry. Additional history on the development of CGNS is available here.

The principal target of CGNS is data normally associated with compressible viscous flow (i.e., the Navier-Stokes equations), but the standard is also applicable to subclasses such as Euler and potential flows. The CGNS standard includes the following types of data.

Structured, unstructured, and hybrid grids
Flow solution data, which may be nodal, cell-centered, face-centered, or edge-centered
Multizone interface connectivity, both abutting and overset
Boundary conditions
Flow equation descriptions, including the equation of state, viscosity and thermal conductivity models, turbulence models, multi-species chemistry models, and electromagnetics
Time-dependent flow, including moving and deforming grids
Dimensional units and nondimensionalization information
Reference states
Convergence history
Association to CAD geometry definitions
User-defined data
Much of the standard and the software is applicable to computational field physics in general. Disciplines other than fluid dynamics would need to augment the data definitions and storage conventions, but the fundamental database software, which provides platform independence, is not specific to fluid dynamics.

http://cgns.sourceforge.net/WhatIsCGNS.html