An Excel/VBA 3-D CFD Program for Educational Purposes

A fully 3-D CFD calculation has been implemented in the Excel/VBA programming environment. It provides a useful and simple methodology for educational purposes, with constant density and viscosity for flow in a rectangular region of 3-D space, which can serve as an introduction to more advanced, sophisticated CFD packages. The use of Excel/VBA enables easy and efficient data management and display while also providing a simple method for visual solution representation. The coupled Visual Basic for Applications programming environment allows users to easily modify the source code and tailor the solution for particular test case conditions and geometries. Several sample calculations are exhibited to illustrate the capabilities. The code is portable to any system with Excel, making the transfer of the software and test cases easy and providing a low cost alternative to commercial codes. Color plots of the solution may be generated rapidly with little effort. The program and Excel sheet can be modified to automatically update the plots at each stage during the calculation so exhibiting a dynamic graphic of the solution as the steady state is being approached. Finally, other Excel utilities were used to illustrate the relative ease of creating a user interface for the program.