Instructor

Janani Muralidharan

Semester

Autumn ‘21

Course Difficulty

The course is moderately difficult . The concepts were not very hard to understand after referring to the prescribed textbook. There were coding assignments which were to be done in Scilab but sufficient time was given to learn programming in Scilab. A project in Ansys was also a significant part of the course and one would benefit if they knew Ansys Fluent beforehand.

Time Commitment Required

The theory portion consisted of watching videos uploaded by Prof Atul Sharma every week and one session with the prof for discussion and doubts. The time required was appropriate to a 6 credit course
The group project and coding assignments required significant time commitment other than the class time. Debugging sessions were also held to help the students with the coding assignments.

Grading Policy and Statistics

AA - 5
AB - 15
BB- 4
BC - 1
DD - 1
FR - 2

Attendance Policy

No attendance policy was enforced in the online sem

Pre-requisites

Basic Fluid mechanics and programming skills would be a good skill to have for this course. Being comfortable with Ansys Fluent would be an added benefit

Evaluation Scheme

2 Quizzes : 5%
Coding assignments : 45%
Endsem : 20%
Project : 30%

Topics Covered in the Course

Review of conservation equations, basic fluid dynamics and heat transfer, Finite Differencing schemes and Finite Volume Schemes, CFD of conduction and convection, Staggered Grid

Teaching Style

Video lectures of Prof Atul Sharma were shared every week along with an interactive session for discussion and doubt solving

Tutorials/Assignments/Projects

Coding assignments were intresting and a good introduction to coding for CFD.
Ansys project was involved and introduced us to many features of Ansys

Feedback on Exams

Exams were a bit length but quiet conceptual. Moderate to difficult

Motivation for taking this course

This course gives a good overview of CFD and provides a strong foundation for further exploration in the field

Course Highlights

The project was the highlight of the course. It involved analysis of ventilation in IIT Bombay classrooms to mitigate risk due to Covid-19 using Ansys FLUENT. It was a glimpse into how actual CFD analysis works and the results of the project was to be implemented in IITB classrooms

Course Importance

This course along with the project is a good opportunity to learn Ansys Fluent and its application which would be vital for anyone venturing in Thermals and Fluids engineering. The FVD and FDM approaches also provide a base if one wishes to persue research in CFD

How strongly would I recommend this course?

I would strongly recommend this course to anyone interested in CFD and TFE.

When to take this course?

I took this course in my 5th sem. This course is also offered in the 4th sem under Prof Saha. 4th/5th sem would be an ideal time to take this course

Going Forward

Opens many avenues for research as CFD is a very vast field. One can specialize in performing simulations on Ansys which would be a very useful skill.

References Used

Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics by Atul Sharma

Interesting relevant links

Prof Atul Sharma’s lectures on youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Q9xQQ31DAKTQzUwEaKuQg

Review By: Varun Pathak