Useful Links

• ChemCAD tutorials
• How to get CHEMCAD for your PC
• Link to BlackBoard
• Homework list
• Virtual Computer Lab (Note to Mac users: you must create a directory /Users/username/Temp for MATLAB to start)
• MATLAB files

Software

Please note that all software required for this class is available on campus in the Chemical Engineering computer lab and the open PC labs in Martin Hall; some MATLAB libraries developed by the instructor also will be made available.

Grading

Grade scale: A+: 95-100%; A: 90-94%; A-: 85-89%; B+: 82-84%; B: 78-81%; B-: 75-77%; C+: 72-74%; C: 68-71%; C-: 65-67%; D+: 62-64%; D: 58-61%; D-: 55-57%; F: 0-54%

Homework/projects: (30%) is due at the start of the Friday lecture period; weekly homework will be assigned on Friday mornings. Only hardcopies of homework turned in at that time will be accepted and no late HW will be accepted. Homework solutions will be discussed only in the Friday discussion section and will not be posted. All homework must be done individually. Some team projects may be assigned during the semester; however, each student is responsible for understanding all the material covered in such projects.

Exams (70%) Four exams will be given; all exams are open book/notes. Exams during the semester will be scheduled for the Wednesday of the week and will be discussed on Friday of that week. NOTE: Grades will be determined using the final exam grade (30%) and the 2 highest exam grades received during the semester (40% total); no make-up exams will be given.

No credit will be given to any assignment and exam that is not signed with the university honor code.

Course Content

This will class focus on numerical solution (and solution analysis) methods applied to chemical engineering modeling problems. Overall, we expect to cover the following material:

1. An introduction to computer aided process design computations with ChemCAD;
2. Procedural programming and an introduction to object-oriented programming concepts in MATLAB;
3. Linear algebra topics including matrix multiplication, writing sets of equations in matrix form, solution of linear systems by Gaussian elimination, numerical methods for determining if problems are over/under-specified, least-squares solutions, exact solutions to sets of linear ODEs;
4. Nonlinear systems methods including, Newton's method, the Newton-Raphson method, and numerical techniques for computing solutions to sets of nonlinear ODEs.

Schedule