CFD Engineer

For beginners, CFD is all about solving fluid flow and heat transfer problems. At later stage CFD might be used for multiphase flows, chemical reactions etc., but the start point is fluid flow and heat transfer problems. CFD software always gives some sort of results. It is CFD engineer’s responsibility to interpret if the results are correct or wrong. To do this correctly, one must have good idea about fluid dynamics and heat transfer physics. In my opinion, CFD just validates one’s thinking with more insights and accurate data. If your thinking and understanding of physics not correct at the first place, CFD results might not be useful to you. To make sure that you have visualized the behaviour of fluid or heat flow in a particular device before you do CFD, you should have very strong fundamentals of fluid dynamics and heat transfer subjects. You also need to learn these subjects so as to understand the underlying equations for CFD. So the first stage of learning is clearing required fundamentals of fluid mechanics and heat transfer. It is expected that one has already crossed this milestone during academics. But let’s not assume that here. I strongly recommend to go through these subjects once more before starting journey in CFD.

For using Computational Fluid Dynamics codes/software/tools, one needs to understand what happens behind the screen or UI (User Interface) of software. It is very critical to understand basics concepts of CFD before you start using it for analysis and solution of industrial problem. In long run what will distinguish good CFD engineer from average engineer is his/her understanding about CFD fundamentals. This milestone is considered as one of the tough one to cross. Learner always gets scared with the complexity of equations, numerical methods etc. Here your end goal of “being application engineer” would come to your rescue. Application engineer need not to be expert in equation mathematics and numerical methods. If you have deep understanding of mathematics and numerical methods, that’s a good thing to have but not must. What is must is your understanding of the overall equations, its terms and its physical meaning. You also need to know the limitations of numerical schemes and where to use what. So just look at each concept from physics point of view rather than focusing on mathematics

This section covers the essential practical background to use a relevant CFD software to apply the outcomes acquired from the former sections.

This section teaches specialized pre-processing tools with advanced meshing techniques.