CFD History and Applications

Abstract

CFD techniques were developed over the years with the hard way of trial and error, refine and many validation and assessment procedures. In the early 1973 the CFD group at Imperial College embarked on an ambitious and attractive program to predict simple shear flows, free and confined jet flows. The work was very intuitive and with modest attempts to predict flow pattern with two and then three dimensional flow configurations. These mainly relate to simple parabolic flow with no recirculation and using stream function –vorticity solution algorithm, hence yielding some non-measurable flow characteristics that made the application rather uncomfortable to compare to real engineering problems. Later that year the newly proposed SIMPLE Semi Implicit solution algorithm partially paved the way with primitive variables velocity U and Pressure P as main parameters. This enables the solution of the Navier Stokes Momentum Equations in a straightforward manner. Grid sized started by 20x20 and up to 10000 orthogonal nodes to converge in 1000 iterations for simple confined symmetrical pipe flow. Necessarily, a model to represent the turbulent characteristics of the flow at high Reynolds numbers was developed by Launder and Spalding in 1974. That was the birth of what is commonly known today as the Standard k-? turbulence model; also known as two equation turbulence model.