Technology in Engineering Education: Using FLUENT Software to Evaluate and Solve Computational Fluid Dynamics Problems

Abstract

The introduction of computational software has revolutionized the engineering profession. The increased dependency on this type of software in the engineering profession has proposed an increase in efficiency within the industry. As a result, new challenges are being created within the classrooms to address this desire for knowledge of this new technology. FLUENT is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software package to simulate fluid flow problems. It uses the finite-volume method to solve the governing equations for a fluid. It provides the capability to use different physical models such as incompressible or compressible, in viscid or viscous, laminar or turbulent, etc. Geometry and grid generation is done using GAMBIT which is the preprocessor bundled with FLUENT. The FLUENT solver has repeatedly proven to be fast and reliable for a wide range of CFD applications. The speed to solution is faster because the suite of FLUENT enables users to stay within one interface from geometry building through the solution process, to post processing and final output. FLUENT's performance has been tried and proven on a variety of multi-platform clusters. At the undergraduate level, we believe that FLUENT can be integrated into the current mainstream fluid mechanics through examples of fluid mechanics problems solving techniques. Although a degree of uncertainty exists using the software as opposed to actual realworld analysis of the fluid mechanics process, the increased experience in using computational software allows the student to model the real world phenomena both graphically and analytically. In this paper, we will share some experiences and views on teaching and learning fluid mechanics course.