Fluid Mechanics Graduate Program

[Ramone]

I'll be starting a graduate program in a computational science department in September. My research will be in the field of Fluid Mechanics. However, I don't come from an engineering background. My undergraduate degree is in Applied Mathematics where I studied ODEs, PDEs, Calculus, Algebra, Numerical Analysis, FEM, FDM, Complex Analysis and Optimization.

Can someone provide me with a good starting point and a path that I should take to get up to speed with Fluid Mechanics? I have 6 months to get my feet...wet. haha.

Thanks!

 

[Sunfire]

Getting to know how to use ANSYS Fluent and CFX should be helpful

 

[jehake12]

1. Start with a Fox & McDonald Introduction to Fluid Mechanics book.
2. Watch the experimental fluid mechanics videos stuck to the top of this forum.

 

[ikjyotsingh]

The book by Kundu and Cohen is quite excellent, as it covers applications and theory.

The book by Frank M. White is the most popular amongst pure engineers, but it's the ire of theorists!

The best fluids book from a purely theoretical perspective is Landau and Lifgarbagez.

 

[boneh3ad]

It would be better to ask what area of fluid mechanics you intend to be working in. The topic is big in a number of fields, including mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, and applied mechanics/mathematics and the best place to start would depend largely on the type of work you will be doing in fluid mechanics.

I'd also say that, as an applied mathematician, I highly doubt you will be using much Fluent or CFX as Sunfire suggested. Most of the applied mathematicians I know in the field aren't bothering with the commercial codes and are instead developing more sophisticated codes.

 

[Ramone]

I will likely be responsible for writing my own code.

I was more interested in understanding what route a typical undergraduate would take to get to a fluid mechanics course...but thanks for the help so far everyone!

 

[boneh3ad]

An what a typical undergrad will take a different route depending on what angle they are approaching fluids from. In other words, what's the end goal? What are the topics our future research group usually covers? What are the application that its research eventually gets applied to? Or if you want, where are you going and who is going to be your advisor there, that way We could see the kind of topics you need to be building up to.

 

[Aero51]

I think a good book to get into, that is also quite cheap, is Granger's Fluid Mechanics book. It covers a broad range of topics while still retaining depth for each. I still use it as a reference.

 

[Sunfire]

Looking at the courses you had taken, Thermodynamics will be an absolute must to add to the "set"