<p>I am currently a junior majoring in M E, and I am taking an intro class in fluid mechanics. I seem to love this class and the material more than all of my other engineering classes (thermo, engineering materials, E E stuff, and whatever else M E’s take up to this point). I am currently signed up for three engineering electives next semester (Compressible Flow, Viscous Flow Analysis and Computation, and Computer Methods in Engineering Design). I’m also considering Finite Element Analysis (don’t know if I should take this?) and Principles of Turbomchinery (I have no idea what this is) next year.</p>
<p>Here is my question: with all of these courses on fluids, what are some things I can do after I graduate?</p>
<p>Thermal-fluids systems is a very broad field and can span from aerodynamics, pump and heat exchanger design, nanotechnology and microfluidics, biomedical engineering, reservoir and production engineering and so forth.</p>
<p>Essentially anything that has flow or heat transfer is within your domain. </p>
<p>Most BS and some MS graduates can work as facility engineers involving rotating equipment (turbines or pumps), HVAC, pipe line and flow assurance for utility or energy companies and even chip design for semi-conductor industries. MS and PhD graduates can go into CFD applications and other research fields.</p>
<p>I would also caution you that taking compressible flow and gas dynamics in the same semester could potentially be a little rough. Viscous flow is an incredibly complex subject if they treat it as in depth as they could. On the other hand, they could just be doing the basics of viscous flow, in which case they will probably skip some steps and make sure you just understand the concepts. Even if they do that, it is still a tough class. Compressible flow is really more about knowing how to solve the problems than it is about knowing the physical situation. I found it to be the easiest of the fluids classes I have taken conceptually, though I haven’t taken the graduate version yet, which I am sure is tougher.</p>
<p>nshah pretty much hit a lot of what you can do with a specialization in fluids, but I guess to expand on that, you could find yourself in just about any industrial field. Aerospace, petrochemical, automotive, architectural/structural, HVAC, marine, power plants/factories and pretty much anything in between. Some type of fluid flow is present just about everywhere.</p>
<p>Job outlook is good considering that almost every industry needs fluids specialists. However, within individual industries, it varies. If you were hoping to look at the wake that an F150 makes while driving for Ford, you are probably out of luck for a couple years.</p>
<p>If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me, and I am sure that nshah would be happy to help. Both of us are grad students in thermal fluid sciences. Personally, I am an aerodynamics guy, but I came from a mechanical background so I have a more well-rounded fluids basis than the average aerospace engineer. =)</p>
<p>I agree with bone, if you are taking graduate fluids (compressible or viscous) it will be MUCH harder than your traditional UG fluid mechanics class. Be careful since if you aren’t prepared for the math and especially dealing with the NS equations all day, it might become difficult fast.</p>
<p>Job outlook is hard to determine since fluid guys can go into a very wide range of industries. Overall engineering recruiting is down due to the economy but when it’ll pick back up, you’ll be in a good position with your background.</p>
<p>Viscous flow especially will be rough if it is taught at a graduate level. To really understand what is going on, you need to understand asymptotic methods, which is something that I am even only just now learning. It some really cool stuff, but it can be mind-bending at times.</p>
<p>Yeah, white is what I had when I took it. It was a great book and great subject, but damn if it didn’t seem opaque at times. I suspect that had more to do with being an undergrad taking viscous flow than it did with the book itself.</p>
<p>We are using White’s book too. Also, I like fluids but not so much the thermal stuff (like thermodynamics and heat transfer) so do I need to spend electives in that area or should I just spend it all on fluids? From reading the responses, “thermal fluid sciences” sounds like a mixture of heat and regular fluids (maybe they are one and the same, but I feel they are different to me).</p>
<p>Fluids mechanics and heat transfer are not necessarily the same, but they are intertwined so closely that if you are good at one, it would be hard to be good at the other. Thermodynamics is the basis for both of them, so while you might not have liked your thermo class, you are still using it every day whether you like it or not. Still, heat transfer and fluids are very similar, and have similar styles of problems and solutions a lot of the time. They are both transport phenomena. Conduction and viscous dissipation are both forms of diffusion, for example, only conduction diffusess energy, while viscous dissipation diffuses momentum. Chances are you will be doing some amount of heat transfer in your viscous flow class, especially since you derive the heat equation in the same way that you derive the momentum equation and they look very similar and are solved similarly.</p>
<p>Fluid mechanics and heat transfer are so closely related together (go similarity solution!), like stress and strain, that you’ll most likely take heat transfer classes with them.</p>
<p>Have you taken heat transfer yet? The same concepts (boundary layer) span both subjects.</p>
<p>Heat Transfer, Mass Transfer, Fluid Dynamic are all very similar in that they involved a gradient as a driving force (Mixing, Cooling, etc.) As a biochemical engineer, I had to take all three courses (also known as transport phenomena), and it was toughest courses I ever took in my undergraduate career. I find as biochemical engineer, fluid and mass transfer is more important then fluid and heat.</p>
<p>Hehe, I actually had to study from Bird, Lightfoot, and Stweart’s Transport Phenomena as an undergraduate. That book is gear toward graduate student, so I don’t know why we had used it as our primary text as an undergraduate.</p>