Abstract:

Today each innovative university is involved in implementation of advanced engineering tools. A lot of effort is given to introduce methods, software and apparatus which together give opportunity to perform complex studies of many modern problems. Such approach is really attractive and valuable for students. By working this way, they are inter alia able to learn how to manage with complicated scientific software, which provides possibility to perform series of analyses of complex physical – chemical issues.

In case of environmental and energy fields of studying, present students are extremely interested in courses devoted to application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in engineering. The idea of the CFD is combination of three disciplines: classic fluid dynamics with advanced mathematical methods to solve such kind of issues as well as computer methods (both to compute flow simulation and visualise results). Above mentioned method, once the domain of academic, postdoctoral researchers, or trained specialists, is now progressively becoming more accessible to graduate engineers for research and development as well as design-oriented tasks in industry [1]. Thus even basic knowledge of this software improves significantly attractiveness of graduate of higher education in the labor market.

Effective learning of operation of CFD software requires practical approach supported by specialist knowledge of the teacher as well as appropriate methods of the course leading. The paper presents set of statistic data acquired as a result of survey conducted among the group of around 150 students of the Faculty Energy and Fuels on AGH University of Science and Technology. Part of responders contributing in the study already had experiences with CFD codes. The aim of study was to collect data allowing to develop the set of recommendations for teachers preparing syllabuses and materials for CFD courses.

Moreover, the paper includes additional information about the methods of teaching currently applied by authors, presented based on case studies.

References:
[1] Jiyuan T. et al., Computational Fluid Dynamics. A practical approach, ELSEVIER/Butterworth-Heinemann 2013

Keywords:

Teaching methods, CFD, survey, case study.