The purpose of this course is to provide a solid background on numerical methods relevant to heat transfer and fluid flow in energy applications, with emphasis on component design. Participants successfully completing this course will have adequate preparation for subsequent studies where commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes are to be employed. The following topics are covered in the course:
- Numerical solutions to differential equations
- Error analysis in numerical methods
- Governing equations for heat transfer in solid materials and radiative exchange
- Governing equations for fluid flow: conservation of mass, linear momentum, and energy
- Finite difference method for 1D and 2D conduction heat transfer
- Euler’s solution method and higher-order time discretization in transient conduction heat transfer
- Stability criteria for explicit time marching solutions
- Advection equation and relevance to convective heat transfer
- Implicit time marching schemes for advection
- Introduction to Navier-Stokes equations and turbulence, and their numerical treatment