Is Matlab suitable for carrying out CFD calculations (especially turbulence and boundary layer and laminar flows)? Thanks R

There is a product called FEMLAB which is an addon for matlab. And, it costs almost as much as CFX. By the looks of it it is more of a finite element solver which has been adapted and stretched.

Matlab is not for high-end CFD, but for smaller things Matlab is certainly a suitable infrastucture - you have access to a lot of finished math routines, can use the GUI building functions and the post-processing routines.

We've recently written a small 2D euler solver in Matlab and coupled it with a boundary layer code for integration into our aero-design systems. This has worked very well and is reasonably fast on small cases.

Matlab is very useful for developing and testing a new program before converting it to compiler language. It has solvers and integrated graphics which helps with rapid development. It can handle modest-sized problems in 2D but it can be very slow. Academic/student versions are available at modest cost, if that applies. There is a compiler available which might change this assesment, but it is expensive. There are also facilities for coupling to other compiled languages.

[bsteen]

For reference, the FEATool Multiphysics and Matlab CFD Toolbox can solve fluid dynamics problems with an easy to use Matlab GUI (and CLI scripting if desired).