MSC in CFD: Imperial College, Cranfield, Southampton
 

Hi guys,

I'm looking forward to apply to one of this MSc in CFD, I would like to know if anyone can share his experience in any of this MSc, and also if someone could recommend me the best option.

Thanky you very much

always a hot topic for sicussions, we discussed it last month:

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/mai...-dynamics.html

well, very briefly. since I have been a MSc student at Cranfield (MSc in CFD) and a PhD student at Imperial (Direct Numerical Simulations) I can give you my opinion based on my experience.

Cranfield: State of the art department, both knowledge and teaching (people) wise, you will get to the bottom of CFD and specialize in one of your areas of interest. it is up to you to decide if you want to focus more on the commercial softwares available (ansys fluent and star ccm+ are taught, meshing wise ICEM and pointwise, post processors tecplot) or if you want to get into code development. no matter what you choose (i did coding), you will get a solid background in numerical techniques for PDE's and hands on work with fluent, you decide where you want to gain your expertise (with your master thesis). The master runs for 1 year (7 month teaching, 5 month master thesis, roughly).

imperial college: undeniable, they have a very good reputation (and also tuition fees are slightly higher for the msc compared to cranfield) but in direct comparison i would still choose cranfield over imperial (I sat in some lectures). It is more a mix of aeronautics (therefore the CFD part focuses more on compressible codes, so I have been told), engineering and science and it runs for 2 years so you might be able to pick from a broader area of topics / areas.

however, if you are already determined that you want to do cfd, then I still would recommend cranfield over imperial. it is focused to the point and you learn advanced topics that are not necessarily taught elsewhere in combination with cfd, like parallel programming for scientific applications.
hope that helped

Dear Tom,

Thank you very much for your kind answer.

I understand then that Cranfield MSc CFD is better than the one offered in Imperial College, but do you know something about the new MSc offered this year in the Imperial College named Advanced Aeronautical Engineering? I'm not sure if I only want to specialise in CFD, I really like CFD, but making a MSc only based in CFD may close me some job opportunities.

The last question is, are you sure that the MSc in the IC are two years long? I can only see that they are 1 year long

Yours faithfully,

GOnzalo

I checked, you are right it is just 1 year (maybe it was 2 years before or a friend of mine who did the master there just took his time ;) )

I was referring to the "MSc in Advanced Computational Methods for Aeronautics, Flow Management and Fluid-Structure Interaction", which would be the more cfd oriented approach. The MSc in Advanced Aeronautical Engineering also seems to to cover cfd but I have my doubts that this will give you a profound knowledge in cfd. Furthermore, it is a mix of cfd and materials so I don't really see a specialisation (and giving the fact that they teach finite elements / difference doesn't look promising either).
However, if you are not really sure in which area you want to specialise, the imperial master may be better suited for you as it is broader in nature so you can choose your specialisation in you master thesis from different areas.

i assume you did aeronautical engineering? do you want to stick to this area or what exactly is it you are searching for?

Gonzalo,

I'm also a past student from Cranfield and the Aero courses are very good there. If your not sure you want to specialise in CFD have a look at Aerospace Dynamics course with the aerodynamics option. This way you would cover broader material and you still have the option to take CFD modules, however you wouldn't do any CFD coding unless you choose a thesis in that area.

Regards