Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Aerodynamic Analysis And Drag Coefficient Evaluation Of Time-Trial Bicycle Riders, Peter Nicholas Doval

Theses and Dissertations

Evaluation of drag coefficient often requires wind tunnel experiments and can be prohibitively expensive if not impossible for large objects or systems. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) aerodynamic analysis offers an alternative approach and can be used as a very effective design tool in many industries: automotive, aerospace, marine, etc. The main objective of this research is to investigate feasibility of using non-contact digitizers for developing finite element models of large objects for subsequent CFD analysis. The developed methodology is applied to investigation of time-trial bicycle rider efficiency. Companies competing in this class of racing spend millions trying to optimize bicycle …

Development And Verification Of A Navier-Stokes Solver With Vorticity Confinement Using Openfoam, Austin Barrett Kimbrell

Masters Theses

Vorticity Confinement (VC) is a numerical technique which enhances computation of fluid flows by acting as negative diffusion within the limit of vortical regions, preventing the inherent numerical dissipation present with conventional methods. VC shares similarities with large eddy simulation (LES), but its behavior is based on a stable negative dissipation of vortical structures controlled by the automatic balance between two parameters, μ [mu] and ε [epsilon].

In this thesis, three-dimensional, parallel-computing Navier-Stokes solvers with VC are developed using the OpenFOAM computational framework. OpenFOAM is an open-source collection of C++ libraries developed for computational fluid dynamics. Object-oriented programming concepts are …