Guest Lecturer (Feb-May 2021)

Computational Modelling and Simulation for Mechanical Engineers

While working in the computational area for the past few years, I realized that undergraduate students in many engineering institutions in India do not have good exposure to computation and its application in their field. Hence, I designed a foundational course in computation for mechanical engineers. The 15-hour course introduced the students to computation, its applications in mechanical engineering and also taught them the fundamental topics. The course consisted of nine hours of theory lectures and six hours of Python coding tutorials to simulate the concepts taught in theory lectures.

11 students from third and 4th year undergraduate program from mechanical engineering department at Yeshwantrao Chavan College of Engineering (YCCE), Nagpur regularly followed the lecture series.

Here is a brief outline of the course:

• Introduction and application (2 hours)
• Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations and their physical significance through examples (2 hours)
• Steady-state heat transfer in 1D (2 hours)
• Tutorial on Python basics (2 hours)
• Tutorial on simulating steady-state heat conduction in 1D (2 hours)
• Steady-state heat transfer in 2D (2 hours)
• Tutorial on simulating steady-state heat transfer in 2D (2 hours)
• Applications through commercial software packages (1 hour)

I also organized a 3-hour interactive career councelling session for them.

This course has prepared them to explore the field by themselves and take up any advanced course in computation, modelling and simulation. It has also improved their job-prospects as many industries prefer candidates with computational background over those who don’t.