A COMPREHENSIVE DISCRIMINATION TEACHING METHOD FOR SOME EASILY-CONFUSED CONCEPTS IN CFD/NHT TEACHING

“Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)” and “numerical heat transfer(NHT)” course series are featured by their complex knowledge system, as well as abstract, dispersed and confusing concepts; therefore, if the teaching method is not appropriate, students would not fully understand some important concepts, feel confused about the differences and interconnections between concepts, and even misunderstand some important concepts, resulting in failing to grasp the main points when facing key problems in numerical simulation. Based on the features of this course series, this article proposed a comprehensive discrimination teaching method: it introduces concepts with typical cases to make abstract concepts concrete, and conducts discrimination teaching of concepts through comparative, comprehensive, and tracing techniques. This teaching method helps students discriminate those easily-confused knowledge points, clarify the differences and interconnections between scattered concepts, thereby achieving a comprehensive and flexible use of knowledge points, leading to an outcome just like “setting the clouds to see the sun and sublimating understanding”. With the examples of some important concepts, such as error, stability and convergence, this article introduced the implementation of the proposed teaching method. This teaching method is expected to provide reference for the teaching or self-study of CFD and NHT course series.