Computational Fluid Dynamics, or CFD, is relatively new compared to the development of fluid mechanics theory itself. Basically, CFD is a method of numerical analysis that analyzes and solves fluid dynamics problems.
The equation of fluid mechanics actually can be solved using general physics law, such as conservation of mechanical energy, Newton’s law, or conservation of mass; but, unfortunately, the nature of the equation involving complex tensor nonlinear partial differential equations which cannot be solved analytically (except you make the 1D, incompressible, inviscid assumption: which is often not the chase for the real world application.
Due to this mathematical complexity, the numerical method has become the best choice (so far) to make the fluid dynamic equation useful for our real-world application, which makes the CFD program quite popular.
The trend of cost of computation (hardware and software) has also become much more conducive than when the CFD was developed.
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