25/04/2015
Years ago, I was sitting in a fluid dynamics class and the professor said that a computer could be used to simulate fluid dynamics problems (this was a long time ago). At the time, I was learning to program Fortran on an IBM 360 (it was a really long time ago). The only question that I asked that day was "Is this an analog computer or digital computer?". He answered, "A digital computer." I love fluid dynamics and programming. Combining the two was just too good to be true.
One of the tricks to writing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software is not to think about the global problem that the program might eventually solve. This is a scary thought. Just concentrate all your imagination on a single point (cell) in the program. Think about what might happen to this cell and write the code to address all the physics and obstacles that this cell might face. The picture below shows a solution of two race cars in ground effect traveling at 120 mph. This problems is solved with 1,200,000 cells. However, the computer thinks it is solving just one cell.
Why I like writing CFD software? The answer is "because it is fun". I simply write a bunch of ASCII character into a computer compiler and the results somehow match reality.
Says my favorite Scientist........ CFD is awesome, you should be enthusiastic to learn on daily basis.