Did you learn CFD in college/university?

Q_Goest

Back in 1988 when I graduated, I can't even remember there being a course in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) let alone taking one. If you're in college/university today or graduated recently, did you take a CFD course? I'm wondering how common it is now.

Also, if you took a course in CFD, tell me what kind of things you modeled and what software you used. Did you have a large project that took most of a semester to accomplish? What did you model and did you do anything to verify the CFD predictions experimentally such as by comparing your results to some kind of documented phenomena? I'd be especially interested in your experience in modeling things like Rayleigh-Benard convection (Benard cells) or similar phenomena.

Q_Goest

Doesn't anyone learn CFD in college?

xxChrisxx

Yep, and I modelled a pipe, and a stepped pipe and a diffuser.
The idea wasn't to do anything complicated, it's to learn how the problem is modelled. Near wall models, turbulence models, solver convergence etc.
Half of it was fluid dynamics, the other half was smashing my face against fluent.

I hate both fluids and CFD.

FAlonso

We are taking a course "Computer Aided Engineering" and we only touch the basics of FEM and CFD in this course. This course is clearly not a UG course and people study it on Post graduate level mainly.

Q_Goest

Thanks guys. I'm kinda surprised but then maybe I shouldn't be. It's been my experience in industry that folks that are doing CFD (or FEA for that matter) typically specialze in it, and only a few percent of the engineering staff actually use it. I took a course on Fluent about 10 years after I graduated but never used it. I think if you don't use the software regularly, it becomes very difficult or impossible to work with.

FeX32

I have used Comsol Multiphysics at uni for CFD. Was a lot of fun actually. Anyone looking for a new software I would recommend it. I went into the "solids" side of engineering after that so I haven't touched it since.
Cheers,

Q_Goest

Thanks FeX. What was the most complicated model you made in school and how long ago was that?

Astronuc

I took a class in computational fluid dynamics somewhere around 1987 while in grad school. We wrote our own code in FORTRAN.

We used Suhas Patankar's text Numerical Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow (Hemisphere Series on Computational Methods in Mechanics and Thermal Science).

Since then, the field has taken off. It was primarily a tool used by aerospace and marine engineers, but it has burgeoned into other fields.

We compared results with analytical models. The professor, who taught the course, and his grad students have compared predictions with measurements. The professor is now widely published, particularly in the area of turbulence simulation.

I think today, most students use commercial programs, and may not develop the numerical methods from scratch.

FAlonso

You have mentioned a big problem. I am about to graduate this year and we no more pay heed to the roots of the analysis softwares like ANSYS, which creates a problem in identifying garbage data when an analysis results appear. Analysis are now nothing more than setting loads, boundary conditions etc. The real procedure has somewhat totally disappeared. The end result is that analysis today is a fast job, but highly unreliable

FeX32

No problem.
The most complicated model was a fluid-structure-interaction problem. It was a model of a human artery with a stent in place. The trick was to get the forces caused by solving the Navier-Stokes equations to cause the deflection of the artery wall.

Cheers,

FeX32

I forgot to mention that it was only a couple years ago. And that particular project was in grad school.

BTown

I just graduated in May 2011 from Purdue University and we had a few courses specifically on CFD. None of us understood what we were doing when it came to Fluent (except for the few people that read up like crazy on it and spent all their time in the lab), but on paper we all have "CFD experience".

The project I remember working on was an airfoil for a commercial aircraft.

Q_Goest

Hi Astronuc. The part about comparing predictions with measurements is interesting. Any suggestions for some really good papers that do this kind of comparison for highly non-linear phenomena? Anything would be good but especially Rayleigh Benard convection. I've seen some outputs on YouTube but I'd love to see a paper that compares CFD analysis to physical measurements!

Q_Goest

Thanks FeX. I don't suppose you ever saw papers that compared CFD results with physical measurements for these stents have you?

Q_Goest

Just curious if that was a fluid-structure interaction problem. I've seen some interesting papers written on CFD analysis of wing flutter.

Astronuc

I'll have to dig around. Really good measurements and predictions are likely proprietary, but there may be research reports and papers from NASA or DOE labs. I do know that work has been done with measurements from laser doppler anemometry with comparison to CFD predictions. I'm sure Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrup-Grumman and others have done significant work in this area with respect to air flow, and other companies have done it in fluid (liquid) flow.

One area of current interest for me is conjugate heat transfer and fluid-structure interaction.

The big push now if for integrated (and fully coupled) multi-scale, multi-physics simulation in a broad range of industries and applications.

Some interesting papers, particularly the one by Smith, which gives some background on CFD.

http://www.iaea.org/NuclearPower/Tec...-14-16-TM.html
http://www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/csni/cfd...hops/XCFD4NRS/

FeX32

I never saw any experimental stent vorticity analysis of a real artery. I presume that this type of experiment would be difficult to attain on a actual human for reasons we can understand.
There was however, another student working on building a system to experimentally simulate this sort of thing. I'm not sure if he published anything on that experiment or not. The work I did with Comsol was for a grad class, not part of my thesis.

In general, I'm not really in that field. After my MSc I went into robotics (still grad work) so my specialty is in a different realm right now.