Open-Source Computational Fluid Dynamics in Engineering Education

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is widely used in industry but is not discussed sufficiently in undergraduate engineering education. In some cases, CFD is studied only from a mathematical perspective, focusing on computational partial differential equations, and in some cases it is introduced as a black-box tool. A hybrid CFD class was developed for undergraduate and graduate students at the University of New Hampshire, which combines the two approaches. The students are exposed to the mathematics and physics behind CFD, and they also utilize OpenFOAM — an open source CFD package — to work on practical problems. Since the code is open-source, the students are able to see and modify it. Although OpenFOAM is challenging due to the minimum graphical user interface, the code-base environment forces the students to learn what the code is doing. Sample assignments and project submissions from the students are presented in the paper.