[pyroknife]

I will be applying for grad school this coming Fall. I would like to pursue a CFD related field. CFD seems like a very broad field and I am a little confused regarding the different areas of CFD.

Does anyone have a breakdown of the different research areas within CFD?

[cfdnewbie]

Well, the first distinction that comes to mind for me is the application of CFD for complex flows versus the more basic research into numerical algorithms and schemes....

[pyroknife]

Originally Posted by cfdnewbie

Well, the first distinction that comes to mind for me is the application of CFD for complex flows versus the more basic research into numerical algorithms and schemes....

Thanks for the reply. I am mainly interested in code development, so more of the fundamental side to CFD.

[cfdnewbie]

The development can be (broadly) divided into two aspects:

a) the numerical theory, including approximation errors, convergence behavior, stability etc

and the engineering aspects

b) implementation issues, memory consumption, parallelization etc.

If you prefer the first issue, I would choose an applied math program with a strong emphasis on CFD.

[pyroknife]

Originally Posted by cfdnewbie

The development can be (broadly) divided into two aspects:

a) the numerical theory, including approximation errors, convergence behavior, stability etc

and the engineering aspects

b) implementation issues, memory consumption, parallelization etc.

If you prefer the first issue, I would choose an applied math program with a strong emphasis on CFD.

Which one would you say has more of a fluid mechanics side to it?
CFD is a combo of fluids, math, and CS.
If I had to choose I want to focus on fluids, with math being second, and CS being 3rd.