The discussion revolves around the intersection of physics graduate studies and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), particularly regarding the best areas of physics to prepare for potential industrial applications of CFD. Participants explore various academic paths, including physics and engineering, and their implications for career prospects in both academia and industry.
Participants do not reach a consensus on the best path for preparing for a career in CFD. There are competing views on the value of physics versus engineering graduate studies, and the discussion remains unresolved regarding the optimal academic background for industrial applications of CFD.
Participants highlight the potential disconnect between academic training in physics and practical applications in industry, particularly in CFD. There are also mentions of specific prerequisites that may be required for transitioning from a physics/math background to engineering programs.
PhysicsWiz4 said:I want to go to physics grad school, but I also want to be ready to go to into CFD for industry if academia doesn't pan out - what area of physics would prepare me best for that?
Dr. D, I want to go to physics grad school because I want to try my hand at academia - or would I not get CFD experience there?Dr.D said:Go to graduate school in engineering and study CFD there.
clope023 said:Plasma and Astrophysics would make use of CFD.
Dr.D said:I rather suspect you will not be able to have it both ways. Look at your last post and the quotes there. You have had two pretty good suggestions for work in CFD within physics, but they are pretty remote from any industrial applications of CFD. No doubt the same principles apply in both places, but the practice and the applications will be quite different. If I were looking to hire someone for industrial CFD work, I doubt that I would have much interest in someone who had a PHD in plasma physics or astrophysics.
PhysicsWiz4 said:Dr. D, I want to go to physics grad school because I want to try my hand at academia - or would I not get CFD experience there?
Cool! I'm interested in astro - do you know which subfield I should be looking at if I want extensive experience with simulation/theory? From the physics side I'm interested in general relativity - is there a field combining CFD/GR? That would be ideal =)
Also, the only astro class I've taken is GR, will that hurt in grad admissions to astrophysics programs? I'm a math/physics double major.
clope023 said:I'm not an astrophysicist, but people I know who've worked in astrophysical simulation did CFD related to plasma falling into black holes, but there's loads more topics out there. I know numerical simulations of general relativity are a big thing in the astrophysics world.
Dr.D said:If I wanted to hire someone to do say, CFD on flow in an IC engine manifold, where would I look? I might hire someone with a strong background in gardening (if he somehow convinced me that he could do the work and wanted to do it), but it is not likely. I'd probably look for some one with an ME PhD in thermo/fluids who had done CFD research. Nothing you do will 100% exclude you from the job market, but that's not really the question, is it? I would think you would want to know what to do to maximize your prospects, not what to do to assure they are not exactly zero.
If a physics/math major were to apply for an engineering PhD program, they might very well be admitted, but subject to the condition that they take a prescribed list of undergraduate engineering courses as prerequisites. Without that, you would be absolutely destroyed on the qualifying exam.
When I was in graduate school (back before the last ice age), one of my class mates in an Advanced Dynamics class was a young woman who had a math degree but wanted to do work in Acoustics which was in the ME department. I know she was a good student, but I don't know if she ever made it through.