Receiving a high quality CFD education is crucial in the world of civil, mechanical, computational and bio-chemical engineering. Accurate, versatile CFD software that offers state-of-the-art visualization and high-performance computing capabilities can enhance the learning experience of students and help them become CFD experts. This is why Flow Science offers Research and Teaching Assistance programs that provide free CFD software to students and teachers.
Many academic researchers face the same problem: a lack of affordable, accessible, high-quality CFD software. Commercial software can be out of the budget of an academic program. And while open-source software tools are free, they require command-line expertise and a lot of troubleshooting, which takes time away from learning CFD.
At Flow Science we know that the quality of CFD education is an invaluable part of students’ success during their academic career and beyond. Our academic assistance program is designed to support the educational goals of participants and improve the quality of their research.
Flow Science offers two academic assistance programs in the US and Canada: the Research Assistance program and the Teaching Assistance program.
The Research Assistance Program
This program was created for individual researchers (students or teachers) at universities. A Research Assistance license is limited to a 4-month period, with the possibility of extensions. Researchers can request FLOW-3D, our multi-application CFD product or FLOW-3D CAST, our dedicated metal casting product. We also include our state-of-the-art post-processing and visualization tool FLOW-3D POST with all our CFD software.
Many universities are currently using or have used our Research Assistance program. Researchers at the Western Michigan University are using FLOW-3D CAST to estimate the erosion on various sand-casting systems for manufacturing automotive parts. The process involves complex turbulent flows and solidification. At the University of Ottawa, researchers are using FLOW-3D to estimate scour caused by tsunami-induced coastal inundation around structures. FLOW-3D is being used at the University of Cincinnati to determine the extent of lateral dispersion in the Ohio River. And researchers at the University of Pretoria used FLOW-3D to simulate the inkjet printability of inks through a piezo-electric nozzle.
FLOW-3D has also been used in cutting-edge research. At the University of California, San Diego, researchers used the software to model ways to mitigate congenital heart defects.
The Teaching Assistance Academic Program
This program is designed for teachers who want to integrate CFD simulation software into their courses. An instructor can request FLOW-3D or FLOW-3D CAST software. FLOW-3D POST will be included. The Teaching Assistance license is annual and renewable. We provide enough seats per class/department so that each student can fully explore the software.
Some of our FLOW-3D Teaching Assistance participants include California State University, Texas A&M University, the University of Michigan, National Technical University of Athens and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Application Process and Getting Started
The application is quick and easy to fill out. Research Assistance applicants will find an optional section to upload a research proposal. A good proposal should contain the summary of your research and a description of how you want to use the software. If your research proposal is accepted, we promptly provide you with a license without any limitations. If your proposal is not accepted or your application does not include a research proposal, your license will have cell count and core count limitations. All licenses include access to online video tutorials and instructions to get you started.
The Teaching Assistance application is similar to the Research Assistance application. Applicants are also asked to provide course IDs, details about the number of students in the class, and the percentage of FLOW-3D component in the final student grade.
While we do not offer technical support as part of the academic assistance programs, we have developed a series of tutorials to help you familiarize yourself with the software interface, suggested workflows, and best practices.
