The Fundamentals of Upfront CAE Should Start in the Universities

A few articles were published in this month's Mechanical Engineering Magazine, highlighting the usage of CFD & FEA in universities. Music to my ears. The dilemna seems to be how to incorporate this into an already tight curriculum? Hmm, considering the importance, I think the implementation can be worked out.

When I was in school, there was a big disconnect between the fundamentals of engineering and the engineering software tools. Looking back, I would have benefited way more if they were taught in tandem. I think schools have come along way over the years and this are a bit more in sync, but they can still be improved.

Unfortunately, like many others, I was forced to teach myself (and all the bad habits associated with it) most of the engineering software tools that were available. I was able to operate it and generate images, pretty sure they were right... Figured I'd post a cool spring loaded poppet valve simulation while I was on a tangent.

The author in the ME article makes a great point when she discusses teaching students how to use it to solve engineering problems, not necessarily how to make the picks and the clicks. I think the challenge is that the professors have to be proficient in the tools that are used. This is a tough one. Many of the university professors have extensive experience in R&D and tend to have a "specialty". Difficult for them to have a wide background on various tools that are being used in the various industries. Let's be honest, how many of them have any experience in Upfront CAE? If they were exposed to any of the tools, they were most likely traditional, older tools that focused on very sophisticated types of analysis.

Obviously, the tools are changing drastically over the years with a niche for helping engineers design faster, cheaper and better. There is no better community of people that will understand this fundamental concept better than todays engineering students.

Take a deep breath and imagine yourself back in your engineering classes. How much easier would it be if you were able to actually see the fundamentals of Bernoulli's eqn or fully developed flow vs. not fully developed. How about heat transfer? How much easier would thermal contact resistance have been to understand if you could see a simple contour plot live?

More importantly, think of how it would have driven home the point on how to problem solve? How to take a very real problem, sketch it up parametrically, run an analysis and make a change to see the effects of the various parameters. "Make this dimension larger, it will then make this spot cooler". No question, the fundamental equations have to be taught and fully understood. But we need to teach tomorrow's engineers how to implement these equations and put them to good use in today's world.