Fluid Mechanics Phenomena Class Computational Apps for Engineering Students

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of an undergraduate fluid Mechanics course teaching technique where students were challenged to work on a pre-designed intensive use of new App building features using the sophisticated COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software. The teaching experiments through lectures were assessed by quizzes to evaluate the simulation enhanced understanding of the fluid concepts. A student survey was conducted to evaluate how the simulation contributed to their learning experience. The goal is to immerse the students in all the main aspects of using COMSOL Apps so that they can feel comfortable with the software and confident that they are correctly solving their simulation problems comparing analytical solutions in their textbook with the new prepared COMSOL Apps. Students make COMSOL applications available to their colleagues as research working mates and professors who might not COMSOL users. Students will learn how to write methods to cover actions not possible by the standard commands available to go beyond what is possible to do with just a conventional model. The course was designed to be of interest to all with some knowledge of fluid Mechanics using COMSOL-APPS. Covering both theories and practical applications, this class emphasizes how to benefit from using its built apps for more efficient CFD simulations. The course apps cover each specific problem setup, the right choice of the boundary conditions, the post-processing options, and the result visualization tools. Users can investigate various APP data scenarios for each main topic problem in the fluid flow simulation