Computational Methods for Fluid Dynamics

Computational fluid dynamics, commonly known under 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 the use of finite element methods is 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 and this 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 fluid mechanics and numerical analysis; significant errors have been made by peo­ ple 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 meth­ ods 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 at Stanford University, the Uni­ versity of Erlangen-Niirnberg and the University of Hamburg.