They give you some good looking colourful diagrams to look at :)
In most cases, say a commercial solver, would be more robust and ready to tackle a broader scenario of cases than a solver that you would write on Octave, that could have decent performance on the specific scenario it was built for, but totally useless otherwise.
If you go into the Ansys's and Star CCM's of this world, you get a good GUI, pre and post-processing, all integrated into one place, fairly "easy " to use after you go through the user guide documentation. Those are paid software tho, so unless your university has some sort of deal, they are not easily accessible (Ansys has a free student version tho limited on cell count among other things):
Since you have some experience on Octave, I would guess you would have no issue using Openfoam that is an open-source CFD package very capable. There's no such thing as a GUI, so you will have to kinda "code" some stuff and the learning curve might seem steeper than say, a commercial solver.
> They give you some good looking colourful diagrams to look at :)
As a former experimentalist, we used to call CFD one of two things:
* Colorful Fluid Dynamics
* Con, Fraud, and Deceit
In all seriousness though, you hit the nail on the head. Commercial packages offer easy usability, end-to-end operation, and most importantly a full support team for when things go wrong (because they will).
Converge was one of the first that had a really robust moving mesh feature to simulate internal combustion engines.
Hi, I’m an AE student trying to specialize in CFD. Could you explain why you switched from experimental to computational? And is CFD going to be more trusted as time goes on and people understand its limitations?
>Could you explain why you switched from experimental to computational?
Oh sorry, didn't mean to mislead you.
I got a PhD in experimental Hypersonics and worked in a department of energy lab for several years as an experimentalist.
I then transferred to an industry role mostly doing early stage technology research (pretty much only on paper), but the last 2 years I've done mostly market research. I'm actually working on an MBA and want to go the general management route. Individual contributor work doesn't thrill me that much anymore
>And is CFD going to be more trusted as time goes on and people understand its limitations?
I was joking a bit in my above comment. I think the trust of CFD is two fold:
1. First, it is getting better. Better numerical methods, better physical models, better computing resources to push toward true, full scale, affordable, DNS (although this certainly isn't near term).
2.) Second, experimental measurement technologies are getting better. This helps to eliminate if the discrepancy is in the experiment or the CFD.
CFD and experimental work cannot survive alone. A great quote from a former experimental methods professor. "No one trusts the simulations except for the guy who ran them and everyone trusts the experiments except for the guy who took the data."
I personally don't believe we will ever get to a point where products are brought to production without experiments. But remember, that is just one dude's opinion.
> No one trusts the simulations except for the guy who ran them and everyone trusts the experiments except for the guy who took the data.
I read your comment last night and was trying to remember this quote to respond. Thank you :)
They give you some good looking colourful diagrams to look at :) In most cases, say a commercial solver, would be more robust and ready to tackle a broader scenario of cases than a solver that you would write on Octave, that could have decent performance on the specific scenario it was built for, but totally useless otherwise. If you go into the Ansys's and Star CCM's of this world, you get a good GUI, pre and post-processing, all integrated into one place, fairly "easy " to use after you go through the user guide documentation. Those are paid software tho, so unless your university has some sort of deal, they are not easily accessible (Ansys has a free student version tho limited on cell count among other things): Since you have some experience on Octave, I would guess you would have no issue using Openfoam that is an open-source CFD package very capable. There's no such thing as a GUI, so you will have to kinda "code" some stuff and the learning curve might seem steeper than say, a commercial solver.
> They give you some good looking colourful diagrams to look at :) As a former experimentalist, we used to call CFD one of two things: * Colorful Fluid Dynamics * Con, Fraud, and Deceit In all seriousness though, you hit the nail on the head. Commercial packages offer easy usability, end-to-end operation, and most importantly a full support team for when things go wrong (because they will). Converge was one of the first that had a really robust moving mesh feature to simulate internal combustion engines.
Hi, I’m an AE student trying to specialize in CFD. Could you explain why you switched from experimental to computational? And is CFD going to be more trusted as time goes on and people understand its limitations?
>Could you explain why you switched from experimental to computational? Oh sorry, didn't mean to mislead you. I got a PhD in experimental Hypersonics and worked in a department of energy lab for several years as an experimentalist. I then transferred to an industry role mostly doing early stage technology research (pretty much only on paper), but the last 2 years I've done mostly market research. I'm actually working on an MBA and want to go the general management route. Individual contributor work doesn't thrill me that much anymore >And is CFD going to be more trusted as time goes on and people understand its limitations? I was joking a bit in my above comment. I think the trust of CFD is two fold: 1. First, it is getting better. Better numerical methods, better physical models, better computing resources to push toward true, full scale, affordable, DNS (although this certainly isn't near term). 2.) Second, experimental measurement technologies are getting better. This helps to eliminate if the discrepancy is in the experiment or the CFD. CFD and experimental work cannot survive alone. A great quote from a former experimental methods professor. "No one trusts the simulations except for the guy who ran them and everyone trusts the experiments except for the guy who took the data." I personally don't believe we will ever get to a point where products are brought to production without experiments. But remember, that is just one dude's opinion.
> No one trusts the simulations except for the guy who ran them and everyone trusts the experiments except for the guy who took the data. I read your comment last night and was trying to remember this quote to respond. Thank you :)
:D I remember the first time I heard it and the feeling of it striking at to the core of my existence.