Why Your CFD Is Wrong – Part 1: What Is a Model?
I started writing this article before the end of spring semester, back in May 2025, and quickly found that it grew to monstrous proportions because there's so much to say about the topic of simulation and numerical approximation that it simply can't fit in a concise blog post. I found myself honing in on aerodynamics simulations specifically (perhaps because that was the topic of one of my elective courses) and, after some helpful advice from a friend, decided to split it into several posts. I intend this series of articles to take the form of three parts and explain, mainly in general terms but with plenty of examples (many drawn directly from the numerical methods and computational aerodynamics coursework I've recently completed), the mathematics behind modeling and simulation: how does it work? How well does it represent real things like airflows? At the end of it, if all goes to plan, you should understand that all computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are wron...