I need to know which universities teach a CFD degree. I want to get into Formula one through design and i think CFD is a better alternative to the wind tunnel for the future. Also wot qualifications do you need to get onto the course?

(1). If CFD is good for aircraft and jet engine design, then it must be good for Formula-1 and engine design as well. (2). A degree in ME or Aero with strong CFD courses should be good enough to get one started in CFD applications. (3). For developing CFD programs, an advanced degree would be handy to do the job. There is no big difference between a regular engineer and a CFD engineer. (4). It is easier to use CFD in the early design phases where parametric or trade study is important. (but don't forget about the test data. It is critical to have good data for validation purposes)

Scott:

There's a M.Sc. in CFD at University of Leeds (http//:www.leeds.ac.uk), Centre for Computational Fluid Dynamics.

Good luck... Ricardo

I assume from your message that you haven't started you undergraduate degree so heres from the beginning.

There is also a MSc in CFD at Cranfield as well as the one at Leeds Uni. You will need a good BSc or B.Eng to get on to these courses and obtain funding, an upper second usually. Most Batchelor level degrees in UK do not seperate the 'CFD' from the fluids. It's in there but it isn't given to you on a plate as such. You will cover the concepts and the things you need to know in Fluid Dynamics, Thermodynamics, Mathematics and maybe one or two other subjects. One thing you may be lacking is Fortran, this is still necessary for 'user coding' in some comercial CFD codes. It is virtually untaught in British Universities now. The academic requirements for Mechanical Engineering are the same for any similar degree you may also want to look at Applied Math, Aeronautical Engineering or similar. Your math skills need to be good, usually beyond those that you can get away with to pass an undergraduate engineering degree. The MSc is not compulsory to obtain work in the Formula 1 field. If you achieve your degree you could do with a good grounding in experimental aero anyway and some experience in the automotive world. In UK you might try Ford, MIRA, Rover, Cosworth, Jaguar and any other mainstream auto company. In general F1 teams have neither the money or the time to train people from graduate level you will usually require several years experience before they will consider you, not to mention a good degree. Most of the big auto co.s will also take on students for sponsorship during their degrees which is also very useful in keeping your costs down and gaining additional experience. Get in touch with their HR depts and see what they do. Good luck

CFD MSc institutions I know of: Imperial College (Uni of London) www.ic.ac.uk Leeds University www.leeds.ac.uk Cranfield www.cranfield.ac.uk

I'd recommend the Cranfield CFD course. I did an MSc in CFD there.'94-95 (I'm not biased am I? ;-) Although very intensive it gave a good grounding in a wide range of areas of CFD. For a formula one career you may wish to follow the route of some colleagues. They studied the Aerodynamics MSc with a few CFD modules selected. They continued their studies to PhD level. Generally in a PhD you are expected to work for the academic instution (e.g taking undergraduate seminars, supervising labs etc), for them this involved taking wind tunnel measurements for Formula One teams. [The Aero. students studied Aero. Eng. for their first degree.]

Don't look down on wind tunnel experiments. CFD is not a cure all. Wind tunnels and CFD go hand in hand. If there are no wind tunnel experiments to validate your CFD code how can the code results be trusted? Validation via wind tunnel experiments are *very* important and without them CFD plots are just (expensive) Colourful Fluid Dynamics plots and nothing more.