AE 236 - Compressible Fluid Mechanics

 

Spring 2020

Prof. Viren Menezes

Author: Milind Kharwade

Pre-requisite courses: AE 225 : Incompressible Fluid Mechanics

Pre-requisite skills: None

Course Content:

  • Review of Fundamentals.
  • Concept of Waves in fluid, Mach waves, Compression waves, Expansion waves. Isentropic flow, Adiabatic flow, Shock waves. Stationary and Moving Normal Shocks. Oblique Shocks, Bow Shocks in 2D. Conical Shocks, Bow Shocks in 3D.
  • Shock interactions, Shock reflection from boundaries, Shockwave Boundary Layer interaction.
  • Prandtl-Meyer expansion fans. Shock Expansion Methods. Mach Number and Area rule, Flow through a Nozzle: Convergent Nozzle, Convergent Divergent Nozzle, Under-expanded and Over-expanded Nozzle flows.
  • Duct flow with friction and heat addition. Shock Tubes. Supersonic and Transonic Wind tunnels. Potential flow equations. High temperature aspects of gas dynamics.
  • Introduction to hypersonic flows.

Information about Projects/Assignments: There were no assignments/projects at least till the midsems. Evaluation was based only on quizzes, midsems and endsems.

Quizzes/Midsem/Endsem papers Difficulty: 3/5

Overall Course Difficulty: Moderate

Average Time Commitment: (Apart from lectures and tutorials) Between 3-6 hrs

Attendance Policy:


General funda: Practice problems and derivations with steps. Cheat sheets are allowed but subtle assumptions told during class are important for problem solving.

Grading stats: S grade was given.

Professor’s Teaching Style: The professor gives very systematic and easy to understand notes. There are no slides, except for figures. It is almost complete in itself. Generally, cheat sheets are allowed by him so that we don’t have to remember all the formulae. He is also very student-friendly.

Should you do this course?: Sophomores with a basic idea of the governing equations in fluid mechanics can take this course. Strongly recommended for those interested in Aerodynamics and even high-speed propulsion as the course forms the basis of it.