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Computational Fluid Dynamics (CDF) explained October 10, 2017

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CDF) explained

What is fluid flow?

Fluid flow is:

  • Breathing, drinking, digesting, washing, swimming, smoking
  • Laundering clothes, and hanging them out to dry
  • Heating or ventilating a room; extinguishing a fire with water
  • Burning gasoline in an automobile engine to create power and (unfortunately) pollution
  • Making soup, creating plastics from petroleum
  • Flying an airplane, parachuting, surfing, sailing, soldering, making steel, electrolysing water

What is Computational fluid dynamics?

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is the use of applied mathematics, physics and computational software to visualise how a gas or liquid flows, as well as how the gas or liquid affects objects as it flows past. Computational fluid dynamics is based on the Navier-Stokes equations. These equations describe how the velocity, pressure, temperature, and density of a moving fluid are related.  In other words, it makes use of numerical methods, mathematical modeling and software tools to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows and uses the latest in computer hardware and elegant programming techniques to model and simulate liquid and gas interactions with surfaces, as defined by boundary conditions. This gives insight into flow patterns that would be difficult, expensive or impossible to study using traditional techniques. 

CFD is predicting what will happen, quantitatively, when fluids flow, often with the complications of:

  • Simultaneous flow of heat
  • Mass transfer (eg perspiration, dissolution)
  • Phase change (eg melting, freezing, boiling),
  • Chemical reaction (eg combustion, rusting),
  • Mechanical movement (eg of pistons, fans, rudders), stresses in and displacement of immersed or surrounding solids. 

Industries where CFD Modeling is applied:

CFD Solution/modeling is used in different industries for different analytical capabilities. Some of the prime industries where CFD simulation is frequently used are:

  • Aerospace / Aeronautics, Automotive or Automobile
  • Building HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning)
  • Chemical / Petrochemicals
  • Energy / Power Generation
  • Manufacturing / Process Engineering
  • Oil and gas industry
  • Product Design and Optimization
  • Oil and gas Industry
  • Turbo Machinery and etc.

Because of the depth of CFD there is high probability of getting lost in the learning joinery and in many cases getting demotivated from learning CFD itself.  We recommend booking onto a CFD course to further your knowledge and understanding.

Are you interested in a computational fluid dynamics course? Find out more about our CFD training at London TFE.

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