Intro to Computational Fluid Dynamics (423-0-1)

Instructors

Neelesh Patankar
847/491-3021
Technological Institute, Rm L490, 2145 Sheridan Rd, EV CAMPUS

Meeting Info

Technological Institute M120: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

What it's about: Want to know how the core computational engine within most well-known computational fluids packages work? Want to be a user of such tools and/or gain the ability to write your own codes? Then, this course is for you.

Computational fluid dynamics is an important tool to investigate fluid flow problems in industry and academia. This first course in the series can be taken without prior background in computational techniques. A background of fundamental fluid dynamics, partial differential equations, linear algebra and a programming language is desirable. The primary focus in this first course is to gain a solid foundation of numerical methods for convection-diffusion problems. The emphasis is on the physical meaning underlying the required mathematics. A control volume method, which is a robust physically intuitive numerical approach, widely used in industry and academia alike, is taught.

Lectures

An outline is given below:

Introduction: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) - a research, modeling and design tool, historical perspective, commercial CFD packages, mathematical description of physical phenomena, a brief discussion of discretization methods - finite difference, finite element, control volume methods.

Introduction to control volume method - the focus of this course.

Numerical solution of diffusion-type equations: Steady one-dimensional conduction, unsteady one-dimensional conduction, two and three-dimensional situations.

Numerical solution of convection-diffusion-type equations: Steady one-dimensional convection-diffusion, discretization equation in two and three-dimensions.

Numerical solution of fluid flow equations: Discretization of continuity and momentum equations for fluid flow, pressure-based algorithms - SIMPLE & SIMPLER.

Registration Requirements

Who takes it: Undergraduate and graduate students interested in computational methods for fluid flow problems.

Class Materials (Suggested)

Suhas V. Patankar, Numerical Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow, Hemisphere Publishing Corp., 1980.