This is the course homepage for the MSc course Computational Methods in Simulation given at the Department of Computer Science (DIKU) at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH). The course was prepared by Professor Kenny Erleben, Associate Professor Melanie Ganz and Associate Professor Francois Lauze. The course structure is 8 weeks with one and a half days of mixed interactive classes and lectures per week and includes 4 hand-ins.

Check out:

  • Overview of topics that we cover in this course
  • Information about how to run our Jupyter notebooks
  • All the slides used in this course
  • Exercises for each week will support you in getting hands on experience with the material.

For teachers:

If you would like to use our course material for you own teaching and need teachers solutions then please feel free to reach out to Professor Kenny Erleben.

For students:

Online students

Since this course is fully open, you are more than welcome to follow along. Unfortunately quizzes cannot be taken at this point, but they mostly check background knowledge. Exercises can be followed along using the provided Jupyter notebooks, but they will not be graded.

Physical students

Registered students at the University of Copenhagen can physically participate and receive ECTS credits for this course. Therefore, they will need to fill out quizzes and submit their exercise hand-ins through the University of Copenhagen system, Absalon. See the exercise page for more information.

Rooms:

  • Monday afternoon: øv - NBB 2.3.I.164, Jagtvej 155
  • Wednesday morning: øv - NBB 2.3.I.164, Jagtvej 155
  • Wednesday afternoon: aud - NBB 2.0.G.064/070, Jagtvej 155

Teachers and TA:

  • Melanie Ganz-Benjaminsen
  • Francois Lauze
  • Jorge Expósito Patiño (TA)

Course Overview:

Week The module of the Week
Week 1 Finite Difference Methods
Week 2 Finite Difference Methods
Week 3 Computational Meshing
Week 4 Finite Element Method
Week 5 Finite Element Method
Week 6 Finite Volume Method
Week 7 Build Your Own Simulator

Textbook:

We do not have a single textbook in this course. Instead slides and notes are available on [this page]. The slides make references to textbooks, scientific papers and software that we strongly encourage students to read and investigate themselves.

Flipped Classroom Teaching

The physical version of this course is designed as a flipped classroom course - what does this mean?

The course is structured as follows:

  • There are no formal lectures, we may present short overviews of topics as we go along.
  • You will have to work in groups throughout all hours, teachers will be coaching and mentoring you during class hours.
  • Video screencasts where the teachers present theory from the syllabus slides will be distributed through this website.
  • Slide material, notes, and exercises will also be distributed through this course web page.
  • Online quizzes will be available through Absalon.
  • All questions regarding slides, programming, hand-ins, the syllabus, and other direct course-related content must be asked during class hours. E-mails will in general be ignored if questions belong to the class hours.
  • Students will be divided into random workgroups every week.
  • Weekly exercises in Jupyter notebooks will be distributed on the [exercises page] to help students with programming exercises and support students in making their bi-weekly hand-ins. The hand ins need to be submitted through Absalon. See the [exercises page] for details.
  • All hand-in deadlines are strict. Students are allowed to hand in early; the TA will provide written feedback on hand-ins. We will try and have feedback available no later than one week after the respective hand-in deadline.
  • Students are allowed to work together but hand-ins are individual and we will check for plagiarism.

Weekly Layout:

  • Prepare for Monday by reading during Friday and the weekend.
  • Continue to work in your study group on Tuesday to increase deep learning of the theory.
  • Plan for Wednesday so you know what problems to ask your teacher about.
  • Use Thursday and Friday to polish your bi-weekly hand-in, and add theory to the practical work you did during Wednesday's classes.

The class schedule is roughly as follows:

Hours Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
8-9 Programming (unsupervised)
9-10 Programming
10-11 Programming
11-12 Summary and Sharing
12-13 Lunch Lunch
13-14 Short Overview & Questions Experiments Planning
14-15 Study group work Perform Experiments
15-16 Study group work (unsupervised) Work on Hand-in (TA supervised)
16-17 Study group work (unsupervised) Work on Hand-in (unsupervised) Bi-Weekly Submission Deadline