Hi! I've read on wikipedia.org that CFD was started by Jameson in US and so on. However in that website there is no mention whatsoever of Spalding and others who have often been thought of (by many at cfd-online.com) as key drivers in the CFD world. Is there a confusion here?

Can we list down in here the chronology of events pertaining to historical milestones of CFD for both commercial and non-commercial?

If you look at the discussion page, plenty of people don't think it was a fantastically well written article. The history section in particular is way too "American" oriented (and I am one so please do not tell me I'm just out to bash Americans). Having said all that, it does not say at all that CFD was started by Jameson. You need to read it much more carefully.

Finally, I remember seeing a series of posts of a world-wide CFD timeline in this site a while ago. Perhaps someone else can provide the pointer.

I guess a lot of depends on your definition of CFD as well as your perspectives on numerical methods. Numerically solving things such as Laplace's equation was quite early, and many of the basic numerical schemes were available way before people really knew what to do with them (i.e., in terms of coding up the schemes).

You're not going back far enough.

Take a look at the history of the Computational Physics group at Los Alamos ( http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/t/t3/history.shtml ). This starts in 1958, with the 'early period' identified as 1958-1968.

I don't have a date for Spaulding's first publications - I'll guess that they're late 60's or early 70's.

Jamison must have been later still.

My imperfect understanding of these three 'schools' of CFD is that they each have a unique philosophy and were initially developed to address unique problems. So I'm not even sure that 'first' is important. What is important is that each approach is still used (as are others developed since) and still contributes to techonology development.

The history of CFD in Wikipedia is mainly about the history of CFD in aerospace, and there Jameson was one of the most important contributors. CFD in other areas have a completely different history. For example, the three largest commercial CFD codes (Fluent, CFX and Star-CD) all originate from work done in England.

I also remember a long dicsussion about the history of CFD on this forum. A quick search now didn't show it though so I haven't got the link.

We have also started to write something about the history of CFD in CFD-Wiki. The history section is still quite thin though. Here is a direct link to it:

http://www.cfd-online.com/Wiki/History_of_CFD

Perhaps it was the "founders of codes" thread in the main discussion forum from July 13, 2005

Yes that was one interesting dicussion. Here is a direct link for everyone:

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forum/main...cgi/read/38425

I think that we have also discussed the history of CFD in another thread also though, or perhaps I remember incorrectly.

The best-known (to me) codes out of LANL are KIVA and Flow-3d.

KIVA, which is often mentioned in this forum, is widely used in the automotive industry.

Flow-3d, developed by C. W. Hirt after he left LANL to form Flow Science, is based partly on his research at LANL.

Jim Park, what do u mean by "3 schools" of CFD? what are they?

Spalding's first big paper was probably in 1972.

Who is the first may not be important but setting records straight in open references such as wikipedia is important I think. History might be distorted/biased but we are not living in the era of William Wallace and so we have a voice in wikipedia as well, especially those who are known experts in this area. To me this is more for curiosity especially when talking about my job to non-CFD friends, I'd have to explain what CFD actually is and often had to tell a bit on its history.

Finite volume CFD, finite element CFD, finite difference CFD, Spectral method, Lattice-Boltzman, Cellular Automata could have its own "first" breakthrough chronological event based on approach to CFD. Maybe we presumed the FV method when we talk about CFD... due to its popularity. Then, in formal discussion, definition of CFD itself has to be made clear at the onset.

OK I'll try based on my observations living through those years.

The early LANL publications (many in JCP) show an interest in fluid transients and large distortions. They include free surface (MAC, SMAC) and two-fluid problems. They're mostly explicit, with implicit techniques applied only when required. One senses that small time steps were required for temporal accuracy. Of course steady state problems could be solved as the limit of a transient process (with appropriate boundary conditions). These techniques are often very cost effective even today!

Spaulding's methods were/are pretty much fully implicit, with guidance to converged solutions by artful selection of relaxation factors. My impression was that these were first developed for steady state problems, although transient flows can also be described. Overall, these may be applicable to a wider class of flows.

Jonas has already mentioned that Jameson's panel methods come out of an aerodynamic orientation.

I have no idea how much Harlow's ideas influenced later research outside the US. Spaulding's methods - as Jonas has noted - have had a major impact. Your memories may well lead to different conclusions.