Abstract
Development described of an educational interface for hands-on student experience with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for undergraduate engineering courses and laboratories. Project part of a three-year National Science Foundation sponsored Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement - Educational Materials Development project with faculty partners from colleges of engineering at Iowa, Iowa State, Cornell and Howard universities along with industrial (commercial CFD code) partner FLUENT Inc, including complementary experimental fluid dynamics and uncertainty analysis. The design of the educational interface teaches students CFD methodology (modeling and numerical methods) and procedures through interactive implementation that automates the CFD process following a step-by-step approach. The CFD process mirrors actual engineering practice: geometry, physics, mesh, solve, reports, and post processing. Predefined active options for students’ exercises use a hierarchical system both for introductory and advanced levels and encourages individual investigation and learning. Ideally, transition for students would be easy from advanced level to using FLUENT or other industrial CFD code directly. Generalizations of CFD templates for pipe, nozzle, and airfoil flows facilitate their use at different universities with different applications, conditions, and exercise notes. Implementation based on results from site testing at faculty partner universities for an introductory fluid mechanics course at Iowa, for aerodynamics and gas dynamics laboratory courses at Iowa State, for a required fluid mechanics sequence at Cornell, and for an aerodynamics course at Howard. The evaluation and research plan (created in collaboration with a third party program evaluation center at the University of Iowa) is described, which focuses on exact descriptions of the implementations of the new interface at partner sites, especially as experienced by the students, including preliminary data on immediate student outcomes as documented from site testing for Fall 2003. Also discussed are conclusions and future work.