Employing Computational Fluid Dynamics in Undergraduate Research

Undergraduate research is an important pathway for students to experience investigating a problem in-depth and gain valuable insight into career prospects. Mechanical engineering undergraduates often solve design-driven problems but do not investigate research-driven problems. They also typically can take computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as an elective course towards the end of their bachelor’s degree which affords an opportunity to expose undergraduate mechanical engineering students to applied CFD research. Towards that end, a project was scaffolded to investigate the feasibility of using complex CFD tools for a simulation of a drop impacting a porous substrate. This system was recently analytically solved and allows for a comparison with numerical results. The principal lesson learned was that in order to facilitate undergraduate research in CFD, a carefully selected scope needs to be rigidly defined, otherwise there’s a risk of a convoluted research project not accessible to an undergraduate mechanical engineering student. This carefully structured research project is possible to complete if the student is motivated in learning numerical methods and an application of fluid mechanics. Lessons learned will be presented and future improvements discussed.