The 10 Critical CFD Mistakes That Are Wasting Your Time (And How to Fix Them with Pro Insights from CFDSource)
Introduction: Why Your CFD Simulation is Failing (And How This Guide Makes You Think Like an Expert) Let’s be honest. You’ve spent hours setting up a simulation. You hit “run,” and what happens? Either the residuals shoot to the moon, or you get results that make absolutely no physical sense. A hot surface that’s somehow […]
Building the Perfect CFD Workstation: A 2025 Guide to Hardware Requirements (CPU, RAM, GPU)
Why Your Workstation Choice Is a Critical R&D Investment, Not an IT Expense Let’s be real for a second. That spinning “solving…” icon isn’t just a minor annoyance—it’s project time, R&D budget, and your own sanity draining away. Thinking of your CFD machine as just another computer is a huge mistake. It’s not an IT […]
The Best CFD Software in 2025: An Expert’s Comparison of Ansys, OpenFOAM, SimScale, & Comsol
Why Your CFD Software Choice in 2025 is More Critical Than Ever Picking a CFD tool isn’t like choosing a new coffee machine. Get it wrong, and you’re not just out a few bucks; you’re potentially weeks behind schedule with results that look impressive but are fundamentally flawed. I’ve seen it happen. The wrong choice […]
How to Validate Your CFD Results: A Guide to Comparing Simulation with Experimental Data
So you’ve run your simulation. The contours look stunning, the streamlines are flowing beautifully, and you finally got that stubborn solution to converge. Great. But what does it actually mean? If you’re new to the field, you might find our foundational guide on [what CFD is and how it works] a useful starting point. Because […]
FVM vs. FEM in Fluid Dynamics: An Engineer’s Guide to Choosing the Right Method
The Critical Choice: Why FVM vs. FEM Isn’t Just Academic—It’s Your Project’s Foundation So, you’re staring at a fluid dynamics problem and the age-old question pops up: FVM or FEM? It feels like a choice between two different programming languages. Pick the wrong one, and you could be fighting your simulation for weeks, only to […]
Understanding Turbulence Models: A Practical Guide to RANS, k-epsilon, and k-omega SST
1. Why Your Choice of Turbulence Model Can Make or Break Your CFD Simulation Picking a turbulence model isn’t just another setting in a dropdown menu. It’s the decision that fundamentally tells your software how to handle the chaotic, swirling nature of fluid flow. Get it wrong, and you could be looking at results that […]
A Beginner’s Guide to Post-Processing: How to Visualize and Interpret CFD Results
Why Your 48-Hour Simulation is Useless Without Smart Post-Processing So, you did it. You wrestled with the geometry, spent hours perfecting the mesh, and patiently watched the residuals drop over two days of solve time. The solver says “Calculation Complete.” Now what? You’re left with a file, maybe several gigabytes in size, full of numbers. […]
What is Convergence in CFD? The Ultimate Guide to Monitoring & Achieving It
There’s nothing worse than babysitting a simulation for hours, maybe even days, only to be greeted by that dreaded “floating point exception” error. We’ve all been there. It’s a frustrating roadblock that can halt an entire project. Often, the culprit is a lack of convergence. Before we dive into fixing it, if you’re new to […]
How Accurate is CFD? A Guide to Understanding Assumptions, Models, and Sources of Error
A colorful CFD plot can be impressively persuasive—or dangerously misleading. The difference lies not in the software, but in the expertise behind it. Anyone can generate an image, but making it reflect reality is another story entirely. This guide cuts through the ambiguity to give you a real engineer’s take on CFD accuracy. Before we […]
How to Choose the Right Boundary Conditions in CFD: An Expert’s Framework
Let’s cut right to it. Your CFD simulation is a story, and the boundary conditions are the first and last chapter. Get them wrong, and the entire story falls apart, no matter how brilliant the middle part (your mesh and solver settings) is. It’s a fundamental piece of the puzzle, and if you’re just starting […]
