Hey community, Just had a small doubt. I see a lot of noise about the prospect of a direct PhD after undergraduate option these days. As advice for an undergraduate student into Aerospace and CFD like myself, do you all think it is wise to directly pursue a PhD after an undergraduate or is it better to pursue an MS first then a PhD?

In my opinion, CFD is a very vast and interesting subject and tool but the one thing which seems to be very enigmatic is turbulence modelling. My question here is quite simple: 1) How would you explain turbulence and turbulence modelling to a kid? 2) Why do we have so many turbulence models and why is it so hard to model turbulence accurately? 3) From an aerospace perspective, does anyone have ideas of How turbulence works in Hypersonics? Or do we even have turbulence there? Would love to see some interesting answers on the same!

Can CFD be used as a part time skill that can be monetized by students? If Yes, then how and what are the resources? If No, then what can be done to make CFD a part time monetizable skill?

Hello dear community, I have a rather divisive question here. We know how Ansys has revolutionized the concept of simulation and made it accessible to a global community of budding engineers. Ansys FLUENT is still considered an engineering standard in CFD in engineering universities around the world and is a very powerful tool with enough room to modify the code to your benefit, the applications being boundless. However, with the rise of competitors like Siemens Star CCM+, Hyperworks, Dassault Simulia XFlow, Cadence etc, Ansys clearly has enough competitors with some interesting features compared to it's CFD portfolio. My question here is: Is Ansys FLUENT/CFD Portfolio still relevant in an era of increasing competition with arguably better features or is it wise to learn other commercial softwares too apart from FLUENT also as a means to improve one's standing in the industry? I would be interested to see your views!! Thank you!!

Hello dear community, Just wanted to gain your opinions on this: Does gaining proficiency in commercial codes like Ansys, Star CCM+ etc suffice or is solver code development more preferred and should be a major focus in both industry and Academia? I have heard conflicting opinions on this from multiple sources. Hence, in a pure CFD commune like ours, It would give a great perspective for aspiring engineers like me.