Bringing out Fluids Experiments from Laboratory to In Silico – A Journey of Hundred Years

By making use of the developments in the fields of numerical methods, computational technology and fluid dynamics models, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) progress forward to play an active role today in various industrial, academic and research activities. In many cases, CFD simulations replace expensive and time consuming laboratory experiments successfully by allowing engineers and scientists to capture pressure, velocity and force distributions. Researchers are now able to test various theoretical conditions unavailable in the laboratory and CFD studies help them to get deeper insights on existing theories. The century-old history started just to solve some stress analysis problems numerically and today CFD methodology is being applied not only in fluid dynamics also in chemical engineering, mineral processing, fire engineering, sports, medical imaging and even in acoustics. This paper reviews the growth of CFD as a discipline and discusses its contemporary methodology.