Anybody can tell me please why there are still hundreds or thousands researchers around the world working on writing or developing CFD codes while there are many powerful softwares are already out there, such as FLUENT, CFX, STAR-CD, etc. These has always been a question for graduate students why they have to write a code while these softwares are available.

Thank you.

So far no comericial code works for all the applications. They have advantages and limitations in some applications. And commerical code is not state-of-art technologoy because they have to test and validate the code before commericilize it.

Therefore researchers are developing codes for specific needs and applications for the research.

Junseok

The codes I have some knowledge of (CFX, Fluent, Flow-3d) keep their source proprietary. So how's a student to really learn CFD if he can't study successful coding practice?

The graduate schools' answer seems to be that you do some code development of your own. Very instructive IMHO.

If you JUST want to solve fluids problems, putting together the input and running the commercial code may be enough to get you out of school with a degree. But you'll be pretty dependent on the technical support staff for the code you're using.

So it's a question of your goals for your (or your advisor's) study program.

Either way, good luck!

My personal experience is:

1) Research requires it - no commercial software licenses.

2) Course work requires programming as a teaching tool.

Hello every body I am searching a link where I can get the comparitive data of commercial, competating codes. (e.g. STARCD, Fluent, CFX etc etc.) for chemical engineering applications. I mean applications regarding simultaneous modeling of heat, hydrodynamic and reactions in two or three phase reactors. If anybody already knows it pls let me know...

Thanks a lot.