CFD for Future Engineers
By Leon Liebenberg, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, and Danie de Kock, Qfinsoft, Pretoria, South Africa
 Danie de Kock, Fluent representative for South Africa, presented a two-hour lecture to 20 top students on the rudiments of CFD; thereafter, each of the students simulated the flow around an airfoil using FlowLab |
Annually, during South Africa’s winter school holidays, the University of Pretoria presents a space and aviation camp for a select group of students in grades 11and 12. The camp’s main goal is to stimulate interest in careers in mechanical and aeronautical engineering by using the excitement of aviation technology and space travel.
To qualify for the 2005 four-day camp, students had to make a conceptual design of an unmanned combat aerial vehicle. They also had to demonstrate distinctions(+80% averages) in at least four subjects, including math and science.
Only twenty of the candidates were selected to participate in this unique and prestigious event, which included the following activities: lectures on aeronau-tics, space travel and space medicine; practical sessions on designing, building and testing model rockets and a device to measure rocket altitude; subsonic wind tunnel testing of airfoils; lectures and tutorials on flow simulation using FlowLab; flight in a military cargo plane during which in-flight refueling with two Cheetah fighter jets was simulated; two aircraft factory visits; flying a simulator of a locally manufactured unmanned aerial vehicle; spinning in a centrifuge to three and a half G’s, and simulating high-altitude flight in a hypobaric chamber.
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