Hi,

Does anybody has posters, photos of general CFD to attract undergraduates in the field.

thank you sadbhaw

See the resources section, Misc/Pictures and Movies. I have seen some nice pictures and animations in those pages.

I would bet that if you contacted some of the vendors directly, they would be more than happy to send you some posters. Don't forget the post-processing companies (e.g. FieldView) as I have seen some very cool ones from them as well (true, they may not show anything real, but cool anyway).

This brings up the question once more. Is CFD nothing more than the generation of colourful pictures? "Cool pictures" costing a great deal to create and having very little value? Colourful pictures impress management paying for their creation. Little do they know about fudging a solution to obtain these pictures. Colour pictures sell, thats the bottom line. It sels CFD codes (have you seen the latest catalogs of the big 5 commercial codes) and it sells to management funding projects - as long as the colourful pictures fills up our presentations.

Just to add to this, I get the feeling that CFD is no longer a means to an end (a tool) but rather the end itself which is colourful "cool" pictures. Let us not forget that CFD is simply a tool, like a hammer or a screw driver. If it does not help to improve on the present state of things its useless, even though it looks great.

For some people it is much easier to sell an idea with help from colourfull 'marketing' pictures than dull experimental curves which are a lot more expensive.

Wow, that is a bit of a pessimistic view. I would say that there are two functions of CFD: real engineering and marketing.

I personally use CFD for actual engineering work. I almost never print out one of the colorful, pretty pictures for an engineering analysis. I look at some of these to help decipher the physics further, but most of my engineering deals with profiles, streamlines, averaged values, and other quantifiable quantities. These quantities are used to compare with original design intent. Modifications to design assumptions, geometries, etc. are made based on these quantities. And so goes the iteration. It is always a good feeling when the test stand confirms your design intent and CFD analysis. I will be the first to admit that this is not always the case. But it happens MUCH more often since CFD has been an integral part of the design process.

Now to marketing. Like it or not, engineers today must also be sales people. You have to sell your arguments and ideas to management, outside funding agencies, etc. Let's face it, many of these people have no technical competence what so ever. They make decisions based on your confidence level, your presentations, their gut feels. Showering them with pretty pictures sometimes is the only way to make a point, even though they still have no clue. They walk away with the feeling that the work is high tech, the latest and greatest, the cutting edge, etc. So in this case, cool pics are good even though they really don't have a useful technical purpose.

What do you think?

Sad but true...

We should not, as engineers, underestimate the need for marketing. Yes it may be sad that we need to create nice pictures, but hey, so do the wind tunnel boys. There aren't many testing facilities that sell themselves on the back of a graph or two, they use just as many plots and pics as we do !! ok there results "may" be better than ours but they still rely on the pretty pics. Why shouldn't we be proud of our pics, I personally take great pride in a well founded CFD image. If the image can tell the story of what the flow is doing, simply and quickly then its been worth it. Yes I still use graphs and tables, but I try and be a little less dull than using only graphs and tables. Wow this soap box is big, May be the wind tunnel guys are just enveaous ? have you ever seen some of the contor plots that are created out of 8 point values. Oh yeh I believe those plots cos they came from a wind tunnel. Well thats a hell of an interpolation routine they must use !!

Sorry about the rant, bad day !!

Bob

"..!! ok there results "may" be better than ours.."

The operative word is "may" - laboratory testing is a science/art in of itself and is subject to a host of error sources. People tend to think - hey, testing is the ultimate answer. Wrong!! Unless it is actual system (not model), under actual conditions (not wind tunnel, etc.), at actual speeds, etc., etc., etc. you can still end up with a nice surprise in the field even if the test results were "good".

Everybody believes the data - except the experimentalist.

Nobody believes the model - except the modeler.