Area of research
 

Hello,

I am about to start a PhD and currently I am looking for a topic. I am interested in CFD or hydrodynamic stability?

What do you think are the advantaged of one over the other?

regards Dude

Re: Area of research
 

Hi Dude,

Depends on what you want to do after your phd... "Pure" CFD will probably open more doors in industry than hydrodynamics stability or hybrid stuff, such a DNS coupled with stability analisis.

Try to figure out what kind of job you want in a few years.

And almost as important as the subject itself, you should carefully choose the lab and your advisor...

Good luck

Re: Area of research
 

This depends upon what you want to do in the long run. Here's my biased opinion:)

Hydrodynamic stability will (should) give you a good grounding in theoretical aspects of fluid flow (receptivity, theories of transition etc) and potentially some interesting mathematical areas of this - high Reynolds number asymptotics and nonlinear stability theory. You'll also get to learn about some aspects of numerical analysis (eigenvalue problems and the solution of both odes and pdes).

For CFD will you be working either on developing/implementing ''new'' ideas for the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations or just running somebody elses CFD code and ''interpreting'' the results. The former should give you a good grounding in various numerical methods and some understanding of the mathematical machinary for developing and proving results about the numerical schemes. Unless you are very much a engineer I would stay clear of the latter approach - running numerical models as ''black boxes'' can be rather tedious.

Re: Area of research
 

Thanks for your opinions. I am looking at a research oriented career.

What are the prospects and scope of research in hydrodynamic stability? What do you think about its future?

I have been told that in a few years time, CFD will be limited to running someone else's codes.

Thanks and regards Dude

Re: Area of research
 

You should view a PhD as introducing you to research work - there is no reason in general that you will not make a research career in that one area where you did your PhD. Most people change research topics after they complete a PhD.

You should choose a PhD project that you think will be interesting.

Area of research
 

Yes

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