BMEG 512 - Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

3 Credit(s)

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is employed in a wide range of industries and disciplines, such as aerospace engineering, automotive engineering, biomedical science and engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, power engineering and sports engineering. Practicing engineers are constantly facing extreme challenges to solve complex fluid flow and heat transfer problems using commercial CFD software. To avoid flawed CFD simulation and results interpretation using commercial CFD packages by users with inadequate training, understanding the fundamental principles that underlie commercial CFD solvers can help the users to effectively harness the power of modern CFD for their research or design. This course is intended as an introduction to the scientific principles and practical engineering applications of CFD. It combines lectures on the CFD principles with projects of research or industrial applications. The emphasis of this course is not to teach the theory behind the CFD techniques, but to help the students apply the knowledge gained into practical use of commercial CFD software (COMSOL, ANSYS and/or STAR-CCM+). Students will first learn the complete CFD process from modeling and approximation, mesh design, computation, to results interpretation through lectures and case studies. The necessary theoretical background in fluid mechanics and heat transfer will be covered in these case studies. Tutorials will be provided to show how to set up, run and interpret the results of CFD models in a commercial code, COMSOL. Students will then work in a project team to solve selected research or industrial fluid flow and/or heat transfer problems in their own field (such as mechanical systems, electronics systems, or biomedical systems) using CFD.