Best OSS CFD Package For High School Physics?

RobHart writes "I am teaching a 'physics of flight' unit to grade 11 Physics students. Part of the unit will have the students running tests on several aerofoils in a wind tunnel. I also want to expose them to a Computational Fluid Dynamics package which will allow them to contrast experimental results with those produced by the CFD package. There are a number of open source CFDs available (Windows- or Linux-based are both fine), but I don't have much time to evaluate which are the simplest to use in terms of setting up the mesh, initial conditions, etc. — a very important issue as students do not have much time in this unit." Can anyone offer insight about ease of use for programs in this niche?

Comments

Here are two great CFD packages for airfoil sim

[vincentbetro]

I will be getting my PhD in Computational Engineering in August, and as a former university, high school and middle school math teacher, there are things that can be applied to teaching young students about CFD without them having all the mathematics background they need. I am the STEM outreach coordinator at the SimCenter, and I have a website http://www2.utc.edu/ which includes an Euler solver on a NACA 0012 airfoil with changeable parameters for students to study the various solutions based on mach, angle of attack, etc. It also does grid adaptation. There is a graduate student tutorial and a high school student activity. I have used it with precalc, calc, and physics students at local high schools. Please feel free to contact me at vincent-betro@utc.edu for anything else I can help with. Vince P.S. Another good (and longer running) package can be obtained from NASA Lewis and can be run on any platform: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil2.html. Good luck!