ENGR30002: Fluid Mechanics

- 2x lab reports (10% each)
- 2x assignments (10% each)
- 3 hr end of year exam (60%)
- Optional quizzes (+1% if you passed them all)

Straight-forward, technical subject that I found to be easier than Engineering Mechanics (at least assignment wise) and very enjoyable. A small portion of the content in the first few weeks (hydrostatics, flow regimes) was touched upon in ESD1. Daniel and Marco have been teaching the subject since 2015 and have been a pretty good job. They have very different styles of teaching and who you prefer is up to personal preference.
It is usually recommended for civil students to take the subject in semester 1 and chemical students to take it in semester 2. This is because Marco (who focuses in civil eng) takes the course for 9 week while Daniel (who focuses in chem eng) for 3 weeks in the first semester and this is reversed in semester 2. However, I took the subject as a civil student in semester 2 and didn't feel like I was at an disadvantage.

Lectures:
Daniel took the course for the first six weeks to cover hydrostatics, conservation of laws, pipe flow and pumps before Macro took it for the next three covering dimensionless parameters, open-channel flow and fluid forces on walls. Daniel then came back for the last three weeks to cover tank mixing, compressible flow and multi-dimensional flow (Navier Stokes Equations). As a mentioned, the way the two lecturers taught differed drastically. Daniel usually had very long and detailed lecture notes full of text. Marco's notes were much more concise and only partially completed. He would complete them with the students during lectures (you would print his notes and bring them to class to write on, similar to calc 2). Personally I preferred Marco's teaching method (it's easier for me to learn by writing). I found Daniel's notes were more difficult to digest and I felt like he put too much attention on detail and missed highlighting key concepts. I would recommend taking more time to review Daniel's lectures. However, both lecturers delivered the content well and provided clear explanations.

One major complaint I had this semester was the pace of the lectures during the last two weeks which covered the topic of multidimensional flow. Being the last topic we covered and riddled with partial differentials, it was definitely one of the more challenging sections of the subject. Daniel's notes for this topic was 200 slides long and we only had about 4 or 5 lectures to cover everything so we literally flew through it and students were forced to do a lot of self learning. The equations which Daniel presented were also more complex than the ones Marco presented in semester 1 (he had them in less simplified forms).

Tutorials:
The tutorials weren't really necessary. You could definitely do well with just the tutorial sheets since solutions were released two week after the tute (or you can find them somewhere floating around online). Some of the tutorial questions were kind of challenging and not really related to content covered in lectures.

Laboratories:
The first lab covered fluid flow in a smooth pipe and second lab covered pumps. Both were very straightforward and you could probably finish up half an hour early. The lab reports were also quite easy and as long as you knew what was going on, could easily get above 18 out of 20.

Assignments:
The assignments were usually questions from past exams or something similar. They weren't very difficult as long as you kept up with the content. Definitely read the questions properly though to avoid losing easy marks.

Quizzes:
The quizzes were introduced as a trial since the fluid mech team want to roll them out as an official assessment component next year. For this semester, they were optional and you would get an extra 1% if you passed them. Unfortunately, they were a bit of a joke. Whoever wrote them seemed to have no idea what was covered in the lectures. The questions made no sense and were error riddled. I gave up wasting my time on them after a few weeks. I really do hope that they improve them for next year, especially if they do become part of the actual assessment.

Exam:
Unfortunately, no solutions were provided to the past exams for Fluid Mechanics. However, I would definitely recommend doing them, at least the ones from 2015 onwards. Marco wrote 75% of the semester 1 exams and Daniel 25%. This was reversed in semester two. Daniel did let us see the solutions to past papers during consultation given that we had actually done them and just wanted to check our solutions. The exam for Fluid Mechanics was probably the one I was most worried about because I didn't really know what to expect. Fortunately, the paper this semester wasn't very difficult if you did your revision properly. It was very fair and written quite well, covering most of the key concepts from the lectures. Daniel mentioned during consultation that the paper wasn't hard but lengthy, but most of the cohort managed to finish up and leave early. Be aware that Daniel like to include theory questions in his exams is you're taking it in semester 2.

Overall:
Well-taught and well-coordinated subject that is very technical and enjoyable. Not too difficult to do well in given you keep up with the content. As with all other subject, I would not recommend cramming everything during swotvac as a large amount of content is covered.

Yes, with screen capture etc.

Daniel Heath, Marco Ghisalberti

Yes, from library website, without solutions

4 Out of 5

None

- 3x 1 hour lectures per week
- 1x 1 hour tutorial per week
- 2x 2 hour labs per semester

Semester 2, 2017

H1

1 lab report (10%), 2 assignments (20%) and a 3 hour exam (70% - hurdle requirement)

Despite my low score in this subject (exam marking must've been harsh), I really enjoyed it. The subject started off with Marco introducing the basic laws such as: conservation of mass, momentum and energy. The next topic was dimensional analysis to get relationships between fluid properties. Here we were also introduced to the Reynolds number, Bond number, Weber number and Froude number. The next topic was looking at pipe flow before Daniel took over to discuss pumps, compressible flow (flow of gases - toughest topic), and stirred tanks. Then Marco took over to finish off with open channel flow, the Navier-Stokes equation in a reasonably simplistic form, and then hydrostatics.

The two lecturers differed in how they taught. Marco would write on partially completed pages, work on problems in class and provide summary sheets of material after each topic was concluded. Daniel opted for slides which would be harder to digest (I learn through writing).

I would've preferred assignments to be a little more spread out, as the two assignments were handed out in the second half of the semester during crunch time. One thing that irritated me, was the fact that the exam contributed to 70% of your grade. An exam that's worth that much, should be split into two exams (one during the middle of the semester, and one at the end)
Anyway, it was a really enjoyable, technical subject.

Yes, with or without screen capture

Dr Daniel Heath, Dr Marco Ghisalberti

No. But there were 10 sample questions

5/5

No prescribed or required textbooks, lectures are self-contained

3 x 1 hour lecture per week, 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week, 1 x 2 hour laboratory work per semester

2016, Semester 1

P

Assignment on Bernoulli equation and friction 10%, Prac report 10%, Exam 80%

Right where to start... A bit of this review will reference a previous review that was posted for 2014 semester 1 as it has a vastly differing opinion of the subject. I would encourage you to read that as well as mine. A lot of the criticism is based on the lecturer, which I believe has changed many times, so your situation may differ, however this is 'my' experience with the subject.

So this subject is HEAVILY theory based, there is a truck load of content to learn over the course of the semester and a lot of difficult concepts to grasp. Some will find it easy others will find it impossible, however most of us struggled with it mainly due to the lectures. Rackel, who you may remember from Engineering Materials, has a very strong French accent and can at times struggle to make sense. English is most definitely her second language, as she herself admitted multiple times. This makes it hard for students to grasp the difficult concepts, especially due to the immense volume of content meaning it had to be explained at a rapid pace. This isn't a good recipe for doing well, which was made all the more worse in that she seemed unable to find a way to work through examples in the lectures. She started off using the doc camera, which was alright except that she would immediately pull the sheet away upon completion not giving anyone a chance to finish copying it down. This also lead to a problem with lecture recordings where she would leave the screen recording the blank document camera and not the powerpoint slides for long sections, although this could be fixed by simply having the slides with you and following the audio. However this changed at about week 3 where she started using the whiteboard which did mean that you could always see the slides on the recording, yet unless you were at the lecture sitting in the front 3 rows you wouldn't be able to see what was on it. This made lectures very hard to follow, and I didn't really get a lot out of them at all. So that was one of the main issues with the subject I had however, again this will most likely not be the case if you study it in the future.

My predominant issue though is with the subject structure. Firstly we were given virtually no opportunity to use the mountains of theory in real life engineering situations, something which I was most disappointed with as it is what I enjoy most about studying engineering, and what I believe we are supposed to be getting out of this course. The only opportunity was in the first and only assignment in which we were given a pretty dull example about a buildings plumbing system. You also spent more time trying to get the right values from the questions due to the poor diagrams than actually solving them. Even the prac was mostly just a setup rig used to sketch graphs that simply proved the theories. Also to add to that the assignment and prac report were worth a grand total of 20% of the final mark. Not only that but they only covered about 20% of the content in the subject meaning the other 80% we never got the chance to apply until the exam, where naturally they were just the same sort of questions in the lectures and tutes with no context or application to real life. Speaking of the exam, you would think given the amount of content there was to learn that a formula sheet would be necessary, especially since pretty much every other eng subject gives you one. NOPE. This of course meant learning every formula, of which there was at least 15, off by heart. Sure some of the equations were given in the questions however there was no way of knowing what to memorise and what to expect to be given. You essentially have to gamble, based on previous exams what equations you'd think you would have to memorize, as some years had some equations given and others didn't. Furthermore 80% is way too much imo, for an exam to be worth, and given there was no motivation to learn the content that wasn't required for assignments, lead to massive cramming and stress levels through the roof. Ideally we should have had 2 or 3 more assignments with some interesting engineering applications that addressed the other parts of the subject.

Finally, tutorials were probably the saving grace of this subject, I went to a few different tutors and found them all way better at explaining the concepts than the lectures. Plus the ability to take down notes for examples was very much needed. I found I learnt most of the subject from the tutes, it was a shame they only went for an hour and couldn't cover more questions. They all follow the basic engineering tutorial format, review the previous weeks material for the first 10 minutes, then work your way through the questions provided, with solutions given at the start of the week after. The only criticism with this was that the solutions were hand written in really bad handwriting, making it hard to understand what values they were using and the logic for answering the question, although if you went to the tute and copied down your own solutions this wasn't an issue.
Conclusions and advice, lectures are an annoying slog, the lack of engineering applications is disappointing, the subject structure is unreasonable, the exam is unfair,the tutorials are a good way to make sure you don't fail. Try to get to learn the concepts as early as possible and keep reviewing them if you can to keep them in your memory in order to avoid the massive exam cramming sessions. Use the discussion forums to ask questions about lecture content as it make much more sense when it is typed down. Good luck if you will be studying it in the future

Yes, with screen capture, see below for issues with this.

Rackel San Nicholas

Yes, Library and on LMS, no solutions.

2 Out of 5

None

3x1 hour lectures. 1x1 tutorial. 1x2 hour prac (one per semester)

2015 Semester 1

Prac Report (10%), Fluids Assignment (10%), 3 hour Exam (80% and a hurdle)

Most prospective Fluid Mech students will have done Eng Mechanics in second year, so I'll work a bit of a comparison into this review. See my review for that here (and, for an entirely different perspective see Hancock's here)

After struggling mightily with Engineering Mechanics (although I ended up with a good mark), I came into Fluid Mech expecting to have a bad time. However – perhaps because the content is easier or maybe because it is explained better – I have found Fluid Mech easier than I expected.

Stan, an Alaskan native who splits the year between UoM and UCI, is a fantastic lecturer. He does something that some lecturers in this field often fail to do: looks at the subject material from a student's perspective. This subject can be tricky and confusing, but Stan seems to understand this and is good at explaining key concepts in detail and emphasising those of most importance. He also has a (somewhat strange but) good sense of humour, which injects some energy into the subject. He's also a genuinely nice guy and gave cupcakes (yes cupcakes) to everyone in the last lecture.

Fluid Mech is a well constructed subject. While the material is taught at a fairly high pace, it was not too much effort to stay up to date with lectures and tutorials, and the assignments were good at guiding study.

The tutes are good but not entirely necessary if you already have a good grasp on the material. The tutor basically goes through 3-5 questions that relate to the past week's material, and worked solutions are provided at the end of the week. Attendance isn't marked, so I only turned up when (a) I woke up early and/or (b) I didn't understand part of the previous week's material.

As all the assessment is completed individually. This is something I appreciate in subjects that are pretty difficult. With Eng Mech, you had to balance the tricky material with group logistics. You'd waste time trying to organise the work when that effort could be better used to understand the content. Also, with the harder subjects, you'll have some students that breeze through it, and others that lag behind a bit. Makes group work difficult as generally 1 or 2 of the group members end up doing most of the work.

The subject could probably be improved with a mid-semester test. 80% is too much for a final exam; it leads to an inherent need to cram and puts pressure on students who struggle. Also, I don't believe in exams as a hurdle requirement when a subject that has no group work; with group work, sometimes poorer students can be carried by their group, necessitating a final exam that they are required to pass. But when all assignments are done individually, a pass doesn't need to be redefined; 50% for the entire subject should be enough.

Overall, this is a very well taught and well constructed subject, especially when compared to the mess that was Eng Mechanics. It is probably one of the better non-breadth, non-elective subjects I have done throughout my Civil Systems major (in terms of material, teaching, workload etc.).

It's worth noting that Stan only lectures in Semester 1, whilst Semester 2 is run by the subject coordinator, Malcolm Davidson, who authored the subject notes which act as the basis for Stan's slides. So, while each semester essentially covers the same content, Stan's notes seem a bit more accessible to the confused masses. i.e. Malcolm's notes seem to lean further towards the common approach (in Eng at least) of just presenting you with a formula in which you plug in the numbers, whereas Stan aims to provide a more intuitive understanding. If any Sem 2 student is struggling to understand the content, send me a PM and I can provide you with Stan's recordings which may be more helpful.
As for advice: keep up with the workload. As I said, it's nothing too difficult, but the content really does build on itself throughout the entire semester, so make sure you understand last week's material if you want to understand this week's.

Yes with video

Stan Grant

Yes, but no solutions provided

4 out of 5

None

3x50 minute lectures and 1x50 minute tutorial per week + 1 single 2 hour Prac at some point from ~ weeks 4-7

2014, Sem 1

H1