Abstract:

Transport phenomena are a key body of knowledge in modern Engineering. Traditionally, courses devoted to transport phenomena are centred on the development and application of simplified mathematical models built with either ordinary or partial differential equations, known as governing equations. Therefore, these courses rely heavily on problem-solving activities in the classroom as well as outside of it. During a course it is common practice to present closed-form problems which do not allow the student to investigate the system response under different conditions, i.e., conducting analyses, that are such an important ability required in Engineering.

With the aim of allowing students to interact with the systems under study, a suite of interactive software modules have been developed using the commercial software Mathematica. Each module solves a particular problem of momentum, heat or mass transport. The data is input through sliders that allow to use a range of values for each one of the variables of interest while the output is presented in graphical form and includes the distribution of the field of interest (velocity, temperature, concentration), and the distribution of the corresponding fluxes (momentum, heat and mass) and flows. For unsteady-state problems the solution is presented as a plot of the evolution of the field of interest. To distribute the modules, a Webpage (http://depa.fquim.unam.mx/fenomenosinteractivos/) has been developed.

This is a work in progress but it has been evaluated with the students through a questionnaire which revealed that the students would be very interested in using this tool.

Keywords:

Engineering, software, simulators, simulation.