PhD Applicant – Fluid Mechanics, CFD & Numerical Simulation

Harish Ragul
Rajaramaduraikarthik

Building numerical solvers for incompressible flows and conjugate heat transfer – from FEniCS finite element methods to Navier–Stokes – with a long-term goal of PhD research in thermal management, CFD, and numerical simulation.

View Research GitHub Download CV

Chennai, Indiaharishragulkarthik@gmail.com

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Academic Background

Education

M.E. Thermal Engineering

JJ College of Engineering and Technology

Anna University

2023 – 2025

CGPA 8.33 / 10

Thesis

Development of a Web-Based Application for Solving Steady-State Thermal Conduction and Convection Problems Using FEniCS and Django

Field of Study

Numerical MethodsCFDScientific ComputingFEMFEniCSHeat TransferConjugate Heat TransferANSYS Fluent

B.E. Aerospace Engineering

Dhanalakshmi Srinivasan Engineering College

Anna University

2019 – 2023

CGPA 8.36 / 10

Thesis

Integration of Inertial Navigation System in a Quadcopter

Field of Study

Orbital MechanicsFlight DynamicsPropulsionAerodynamicsSpace ScienceEmbedded SystemsIMU / Sensor FusionMicroPythonFlight Controllers

Experience

Professional Experience

Industry work provides deep computational software engineering skills – directly applicable to building research infrastructure and production-grade numerical solvers.

Research Appointment

Project Associate I

Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIITDM Kancheepuram · Full-time · Greater Chennai Area · On-site

Jul 2026 – Present

›National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) – Deep Ocean Mission, sponsored by the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
›Mathematical modelling, simulation, and experimental verification of underwater rigid body dynamics.

Backend & Data Engineering

Software Developer – Python

Telebillz Solutions LLP · Chennai, Tamil Nadu (Remote)

Jul 2023 – Jul 2026

›Built and maintained production backend services in Django and Flask: REST APIs, PostgreSQL/MySQL database design, payment integrations, analytics pipelines (Pandas + SQL).
›Developed clean, reviewed, production-quality code in an agile team – practices directly transferable to simulation scripting and reproducible research workflows.

Teaching

Teaching Assistant

Dhanalakshmi Srinivasan University · Perambalur, Tamil Nadu

Oct 2024 – May 2025

›Technical Training Engineer at the Drone Innovation Center.

Key Projects

Research & Engineering Work

Each project combines rigorous theory with working implementations – solver code, deployed applications, and open-source contributions.

Lid-Driven Cavity Flow: A Python Projection Method Solver Validated Against Ghia et al. (1982)

I have been studying CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) from absolute basics like 1D Advection Flow, Diffusion Problems, Burgers Equation. I'm using Python to simulate and solve all these problems myself. From there I worked up to the Navier-Stokes Equation Problem and I studied about the Projection method to solve it. I built a custom solver to simulate the 2D incompressible viscous flow with Projection method. To verify the solver working correctly I chose to solve the Classic Lid-Driven Cavity Problem and compared my results against the Ghia et al. (1982) benchmark data to validate the solver.

CFDNavier-StokesLid-Driven CavityProjection Method+3

View All Projects

Research Output

Publications

Rajaramaduraikarthik, H. (2026). Lid-Driven Cavity Flow: A Python Projection Method Solver Validated Against Ghia et al. (1982). Zenodo.

doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20623227

Published

Rajaramaduraikarthik, H. (2026). CFD from Scratch: A Self-Paced Python Course from Finite Differences to Turbulence. Journal of Open Source Education.

jose.theoj.org

Under review

Technical Toolkit

Skills & Tools

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Thermal Simulation

Steady-state & transient heat conduction
Conjugate heat transfer
ANSYS Thermal & Fluent (temperature field analysis, BCs, material properties)
FEM (FEniCS)
Mixed boundary conditions
Non-uniform thermal conductivity

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CFD & Numerics

FDM, FVM
Projection method, SIMPLE
TVD schemes (van Leer, minmod, superbee, MC)
QUICK, MUSCL
Pressure-velocity coupling

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Turbulence

RANS
k-ε, k-ω SST (Menter 1994)
Wall functions
y⁺ estimation
Turbulent channel flow validation

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CFD & Thermal Tools

ANSYS (Fluent, CFX, Thermal, Structural, ICEM CFD, Workbench, SpaceClaim)
OpenFOAM (icoFoam, simpleFoam, blockMesh, snappyHexMesh, ParaView)
FEniCS
Python/NumPy solvers

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Programming

Python (NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, Pandas, Django)
C/C++ (basic reading & modification)
Git
Linux

Writing

Research Notes

Technical notes on solver derivations, numerical methods, and CFD case studies – written to build depth and share understanding.

All posts

CFDAI

How I Taught Myself CFD Using an AI Code Agent

I used Claude Code as a Socratic tutor to learn CFD from scratch – building solvers from linear advection all the way to turbulence models and PINNs, using the Feynman technique to fill every gap along the way.

June 7, 20266 min read