An Introduction To Computational Fluid Dynamics
Matter is divided into three distinct physical forms in most environments: Solid, Liquid and Gas other than Plasma and Bose-Einstein condensate.
Solid matter is composed of tightly packed particles, Liquid matter is made of loosely packed particles compared to solids and Gaseous matter is made of loosely packed particles compared to solids and liquids.
Any substance (liquid, gas or plasma) which can deform continuously when force is applied and obeys Bernoulli’s principle called as fluid(s).
Dynamics is the branch of mechanics that deals with the objects that are subjected to force and are in motion, Fluid Dynamics deals with the study of behavior of fluid(s) in motion.
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), an advanced field of fluid mechanics that helps us understand the fluid dynamics and the process of heat transfer among the parts of the system. In the early days CFD was more complicated and the cost of computation was high that it had been restricted to the institutions and industries. Now, due to the advancement in computers many codes of CFD are available that made available even to the common people. CFD plays an important role in industries to minimize the cost of production and also helps in detecting the design failures before the product development.
Applications
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has a wide range of applications, some of them are mentioned below. To
• Simulate the stress and performance of rotary machines (pumps, compressors, gas turbines).
• Study the characteristics of laminar and turbulent flows.
• Simulate the Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) applications.
• Simulate aerodynamics of vehicles in automobiles.
• Study the Heat Transfer process.
• Simulate the cooling process in electronic equipment.
• Simulate chemical reactions and combustion processes.
• Study compressible and incompressible flow characteristics.
• Study turbo machinery in aerospace applications.
• Study environmental changes.
• Study biological flows.