Preface
Computational fluid dynamics, commonly known by the acronym 'CFD',
is undergoing significant expansion in terms of both the number of courses
offered at universities and the number of researchers active in the field. There
are a number of software packages available that solve fluid flow problems; the
market is not quite as large as the one for structural mechanics codes, in which
finite element methods are well established. The lag can be explained by the
fact that CFD problems are, in general, more difficult to solve. However, CFD
codes are slowly being accepted as design tools by industrial users. At present,
users of CFD need to be fairly knowledgeable, which requires education of
both students and working engineers. The present book is an attempt to fill
this need.
It is our belief that, to work in CFD, one needs a solid background in both
fluid mechanics and numerical analysis; significant errors have been made by
people lacking knowledge in one or the other. We therefore encourage the
reader to obtain a working knowledge of these subjects before entering into
a study of the material in this book. Because different people view numerical methods differently, and to make this work more self-contained, we have
included two chapters on basic numerical methods in this book. The book
is based on material offered by the authors in courses a t Stanford University, the University of Erlangen-Niirnberg and the Technical University of
Hamburg-Harburg. It reflects the authors' experience in both writing CFD
codes and using them to solve engineering problems. Many of the codes used
in the examples, from the simple ones involving rectangular grids to the ones
using non-orthogonal grids and multigrid methods, are available to interested
readers; see the information on how to access them via Internet in the appendix. These codes illustrate the methods described in the book; they can be
adapted to the solution of many fluid mechanical problems. Students should
try to modify them (eg. t o implement different boundary conditions, interpolation schemes, differentiation and integration approximations, etc.). This is
important as one does not really know a method until s/he has programmed
and/or run it.
Since one of the authors (M.P.) has just recently decided to give up his professor position t o work for a provider of CFD tools, we have also included in
the Internet site a special version of a full-featured commercial CFD package
Computational fluid dynamics, commonly known by the acronym 'CFD',
is undergoing significant expansion in terms of both the number of courses
offered at universities and the number of researchers active in the field. There
are a number of software packages available that solve fluid flow problems; the
market is not quite as large as the one for structural mechanics codes, in which
finite element methods are well established. The lag can be explained by the
fact that CFD problems are, in general, more difficult to solve. However, CFD
codes are slowly being accepted as design tools by industrial users. At present,
users of CFD need to be fairly knowledgeable, which requires education of
both students and working engineers. The present book is an attempt to fill
this need.
It is our belief that, to work in CFD, one needs a solid background in both
fluid mechanics and numerical analysis; significant errors have been made by
people lacking knowledge in one or the other. We therefore encourage the
reader to obtain a working knowledge of these subjects before entering into
a study of the material in this book. Because different people view numerical methods differently, and to make this work more self-contained, we have
included two chapters on basic numerical methods in this book. The book
is based on material offered by the authors in courses a t Stanford University, the University of Erlangen-Niirnberg and the Technical University of
Hamburg-Harburg. It reflects the authors' experience in both writing CFD
codes and using them to solve engineering problems. Many of the codes used
in the examples, from the simple ones involving rectangular grids to the ones
using non-orthogonal grids and multigrid methods, are available to interested
readers; see the information on how to access them via Internet in the appendix. These codes illustrate the methods described in the book; they can be
adapted to the solution of many fluid mechanical problems. Students should
try to modify them (eg. t o implement different boundary conditions, interpolation schemes, differentiation and integration approximations, etc.). This is
important as one does not really know a method until s/he has programmed
and/or run it.
Since one of the authors (M.P.) has just recently decided to give up his professor position t o work for a provider of CFD tools, we have also included in
the Internet site a special version of a full-featured commercial CFD package