CFD - Tool of Engineers.

Here comes ma first post in this blog. I just wanna make my first post about something which people are not much aware of. So I am jus penning here, a very brief introduction of CFD. Hope people will get a lucid picture about CFD from this post.
COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS:
What is CFD?
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is the analysis of systems involving fluid flow, heat transfer and associated phenomena such as chemical reactions by means of computer-based simulation. The technique is very powerful and spans a wide range of industrial and spans a wide range of industrial and non-industrial application areas.
How does a CFD code work?
CFD codes are structured around the numerical algorithms that can tackle fluid flow problems. All codes contain three main elements: (1) a pre-processor (2) a solver (3) a post-processor
PRE-PROCESSOR:
Pre-processor consists of the input of a flow problem to a CFD program by means of an operator-friendly interface and the subsequent transformation of this input into a form suitable for use by the solver. Pre processing stage involves fixing the domain, Generation of grids, Selection of physical and chemical phenomena, Definition of fluid properties, and Specification of appropriate boundary conditions
SOLVER:
There are three distinct streams of numerical solution techniques. Finite difference, finite element and spectral methods. The numerical methods that form the basis of solver perform the following steps.
1. Approximation of the unknown flow variables by means of simple functions
2. Discretisation by substitution of the approximations into the governing flow equations and subsequent mathematical manipulations
3. Solution of the algebraic equations
4. The main differences between the three separate streams are associated with the way in which the flow variables are approximated and with the discretisation process
POST-PROCESSOR:
As in pre-processing a huge amount of development work has recently taken place in the post-processing field. Owing to the increased popularity of engineering workstations, many of which have outstanding graphics capabilities, the leading CFD packages are now equipped with versatile data visualization tools. These include vector plots, line and shaded contour plots, 2D and 3D plots etc
APPLICATIONS:
CFD software gives us the power to simulate flows of gases and liquids, heat and mass transfer, moving bodies, multiphase physics, chemical reaction, fluid-structure interaction and acoustics through computer modeling. Since it builds a 'virtual prototype' of the system or device that we wish to analyze, it makes our work bit easy and of course with perfection. The software will provide us with images and data, which predict the performance of that design.