Reviews by- Saukhya Telge, Shiva Sudhan, Disha Gupta, Akanksha Singh

Exploring CFD at IITB

Note that some pointers might be specific to the particular professor and might be different if the professor is different when you take the course.

ME704: Computational Methods in Thermal & Fluid Engg

Credits: 6 (3 hours of lectures per week)

Prof: Atul Sharma

Usually runs during: Odd Semester

Description: A good introductory course for understanding the backend of CFD. The course starts with an overview of numerical methods and covers Finite Difference Method (FDM). You’ll learn to write CFD solvers in MATLAB from scratch. The course will familiarize you with some of the basic jargon used in CFD. The use of commercial software was not covered in this course.

Course Structure: The course structure had everything: quizzes, MATLAB coding assignments, midsem, endsem and a project. The assignments and the project led to a lot of learning.

Difficulty: Content is fairly easy to grasp, especially the first half involving numerical methods. But, the course structure made it a little time-consuming.

Teaching: The professor teaches quite well, and the exams are easy if you have attended the lectures (there was compulsory attendance) and thoroughly reviewed the slides.

ME415: Computational Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer

Credits: 6

Prof: Atul Sharma

Usually runs during: Even Semester

Description: It is the second part of ME704, where the concepts of ME704 are taught briefly, after which the intrinsics of the finite volume method are covered. Various solution algorithms for solving CFD problems are taught, which were then implemented in MATLAB.

Course Structure: Contains everything, such as quizzes, assignments, project, mid sem and end sem. Quite a heavy course.

Difficulty: Strongly recommended to take ME704 before taking this course, or else be prepared for a steep learning curve

Teaching: Easy to understand with sir’s slides and his textbook which covers the topics taught.

ME412: CFD and HT Lab

Credits: 6 (6 hours of lab per week)

Prof: Janani Muralidharan

Usually runs during: Even Semester

Description: The course aims to teach the use of open-source CFD software called OpenFOAM. Although some basics about the backend are covered, it is recommended that you have taken some CFD course before to understand what you’re doing with the software.

Course Structure: There will be 2 sessions of 2.5-3 hours per week. Each session usually involves the prof giving some background about that day’s topic followed by a hands-on session in which you perform the simulation in OpenFOAM. A submission is associated with most of these assignments, but most of the time you’ll be done with it during class hours.

Difficulty: The theory part might be a little difficult to understand if you have no prior exposure to CFD. For the software, if you have not used linux before, you might take some time to get used to the terminal commands. But the software itself is not that tough to get used to.

Teaching: Not much theory is covered, but the professor taught whatever is covered well. Sometimes, videos were provided instead, which were also easy to follow. For the hands-on part, TAs were quite helpful and solved any issue you faced in execution of the software.

AE780: Computational Fluid Dynamics

Credits: 6

Prof: Ganpati Bhatt

Usually runs during: Even semester

Description: This course gives a good overview of the Ansys Fluent, starting from the scratch to using various models, even including the Turbulent model. No prerequisite is required apart from the knowledge of fluid dynamics.

Course Structure: There are 2 lectures in a week, each 1.5 hours. Mostly, in the first lecture the professor will give an introductory theory related to the topic followed by an assignment which is supposed to be solved in the class itself, which generally gets completed in the class apart from submitting the report. A midsem and endsem based on the software and theory will be there apart from assignments.

Difficulty: The computational part is easy, but the theory which is provided in the lectures is not enough to learn CFD conceptually. The exams are open book and open internet, which again makes it easier but if you really want to learn CFD, reading a book which will take a little more time apart from lectures is required, but the course is quite easy if you cope up with the assignments regularly.

Teaching: The professor is appreciably flexible with the deadlines and really helps if you ask good questions and want to learn. The grading is absolute though.

AE706: Computational Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow

Credits: 6

Prof: J.C.Mandal

Usually runs during: Even semester

Description: The course is mostly mathematical and interesting. It is based on generating codes to make your own CFD solver. Solving differential equations using different methods, grid transformation etc is included. Gas-dynamics is written as a prerequisite but it is easy to understand without taking a separate course on gas dynamics.

Course Structure: The assignments are accepted only on Python or C++. It would be easy to solve the assignments if you are good at coding already, or otherwise you’ll initially struggle but by half of the course it is possible to get acquainted since the assignments are similar. Apart from assignments, there were 2 quizzes with midsem and endsem.

Difficulty: The content is easy to understand if you attend lectures, since whatever the professor writes on board is not shared. For doing good in the exams, a good understanding of the topic to solve critical problems is required, he doesn’t generally ask direct questions.

Teaching: Many students find the pace slow in lectures, but the professor explains things well and focussed on learning more than grades. Assignments are given a good weightage.

CL657: Computational Flow Modelling

Credits: 6

Prof: Partha Sarathi Goswami

Usually runs during: even semester

Description: Theoretical concepts of CFD was covered, but may change to hands-on in the future ( as mentioned by prof)

Course Structure: There will be 2 sessions of 3 hours per week. Course based on theoretical concepts of CFD. In total there were 3 assignments out of which two were computations for which we were allowed to use any programming language, Python, Matlab, etc. The first assignment was theoretical and was mainly proving stuff.

Difficulty: It is easy to get good grades.

Teaching: Prof uploads his notes on Moodle.

Reviews by Saukhya Telge, Shiva Sudhan, Disha Gupta, Akanksha Singh