Customer Reviews

Computational Fluid Dynamics

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book covers just about every aspect Computational Fluid Dynamics. The fact that a single author could master such a range of topics and articulate them clearly is truly remarkable. Yet, I can't recommend this book. I bought it with high hopes in 2004, eager to broaden my knowledge beyond the finite volume method and SIMPLE algorithm. Well, it's been over three years and the book has mostly sat on the shelf. Every time I pull it down to learn some tidbit, I come away empty handed. The writing is high level and abstract, and it's difficult to extract useful nuggets from it. The first line of the preface says, "This book is intended for the beginner as well as for the practitioner in CFD." As a long time practitioner, I can't see it as useful for either. A typical section consists of a brief intro, then a bunch of equations, followed by some results extracted from a journal paper. Then it's on to the next section. Consider Chapter 3 on the Finite Difference Method. The first 5 pages are an onslaught of 45 equations and almost no descriptive text. How does one get a sense of the method from this? I would strongly recommend reading a section or two before buying this book.

I like this book a great deal, but do note that I'm reviewing it as a treatment of numerical approaches to partial differential equations in computational fluid dynamics and not as a text for CFD as a whole.

My background is applied mathematics via finance and economics. I'm interested in solving parabolic and elliptic PDEs by finite differences, and eventually by finite elements and spectral techniques, as a means of pricing various financial derivatives.

Chung's book is a remarkably thorough treatment of the available techniques in these areas with substantial pointers to the primary literature. Explanations tend to be rather terse but nonetheless complete. More explanation, and possibly a few more examples, might be helpful, but that's a question of authorial style. Indeed, at some points I'm happy for a spare treatment that highlights the logical structure of the problem at hand in a subject laden with multiple layers of literature and detail.

To calibrate, I find Chung's book more accessible than Roache (CFD), Richtmyer and Morton, Thomas, and Elman et al; about the same level as LeVeque (Finite Difference Methods) and Ames (Numerical Methods); and harder than Smith, Morton and Mayers, Trefethen (Spectral Methods), Pozrikidis (Finite and Spectral Element Methods), and the treatment of PDEs in Press et al. It's also easier to use than more specialized works like Strikwerda, Karniadakis and Sherwin, and any of Hackbusch's books. (Full citations are in Listmania; see my Amazon profile.)

If you're willing to work with pencil in-hand, as with almost all science books, and to hit the stacks occasionally for back-up material, Chung's book is a great entry point to numerical PDEs.

I ordered this book, because I actually have a class with the author. The problem is that it is not much of a reference book, it is written exactly like the author teaches the class. He shows you something one time and then expects that you understand it fully, no matter what, so if you don't understand his example or what he is saying you are in trouble because there is not much else you can do. My advantage is/was that this is not the first CFD class that I have had, so I could go back to those notes/books for help. If you want a CFD book go for some more specialized ones like these ISBN #:
0750664312, 0133173054, 0072466855, 0962373109, 0072399104, 0471356050

Those are some specialized books and some are kinda old but they are all very good, and those are only a few that are in my library, but check them out before you buy this book. The only reason I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 is because he does have a lot of different methods that are covered, even though some are not very good of a choice to use anymore.

This book is very good. As a student in mechanical engineering, I learned a lot about CFD and fluid mechanics. The price is little high but I using a coupon from couponsky.com and save a lot. It is worthy to buy if you are interested in CFD area. I recommend this book to students as me.

EXPECTACULAR BOOK. All the roots and profiles for cfd are in hand. Thank you.

This book is incredible! It covers a wide variety of methods and explains them in a intuitive manner. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to really learn CFD.

This book is incredible! It contains the best explanations for the various methods covered. A must have if you want to learn CFD from first principles.