Nafiz Ahmed Khan
Bangladesh

"The online learning experience is truly praiseworthy. It is engaging and tremendously user-friendly."

While studying to be an aerospace engineer, Nafiz Ahmed Khan participated in the online course Rotor and Wake Aerodynamics. Read about his experience.

What was your motivation for enrolling in this course/program?
I am very enthusiastic about working in the wind energy field. Being an aerospace engineer, I intend to conduct research on wind turbine aerodynamics and wind farm layout optimization. In my master’s thesis, I studied Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine design and tried to enhance the blades' performance by adding tip vanes at the leading edge. From that point on, I envisage expanding my knowledge further on unsteady aerodynamics and wake modeling. More specifically, I am planning to design a layout of wind turbine blades with tip vanes and want to predict how the wakes affect power production capabilities.

Then, I found this exclusive online course at TU Delft, where the contents are fully aligned with my research interests. This course will help me understand the fundamentals of Blade Element Moment Theory and Lifting Line Theory to model wind turbines, and the whole modeling is done in Python, which is a plus for this course. Furthermore, the Vortex Line Methods and Wake Models will help me to resolve the complexity of vortices created behind the rotors, which is one of the paramount factors in my choosing this course.

How did/will this course impact your career or life?
The contribution of this course to my academic career can’t be expressed in words. While pursuing this course, I also applied for Doctor of Philosophy at different universities for my higher studies. I mentioned the course contents in numerous interviews. I described in detail what I’m expecting to learn from this course and how I can contribute to the prospective lab’s research. Finally, I got an admission offer for my PhD in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. The research topic is "Wind Turbine Aerodynamics and Layout Optimization," and my prospective supervisor is quite aware of the favorable reputation of the TU Delft course. This is absolutely going to be a turning point in my academic career.

How was your experience learning online?
The online learning experience is truly praiseworthy. It is engaging and tremendously user-friendly. The most important part I found was that the course contents are well arranged and presented in a continuous fashion. The contents are organized from the fundamentals to advanced topics. The slides as well as the live lectures are so interactive that learners can benefit in a meaningful way. The assignments are very tricky to solve, but one can clear his or her concepts by solving each problem. Lastly, the discussion forum is highly active among the faculty members who are involved in this course, where learners can ask questions and get feedback.

What advice would you give someone who is thinking of taking a similar course?
I would recommend this course to those who are willing to learn about wind turbine wake modeling and unsteady aerodynamics. Though I would say prior knowledge of aerodynamics and fluid mechanics is mandatory before pursuing this course. This course requires an ample amount of time and dedication, but once invested, I felt it was well worth it.