Engineering Commons^™

Analysis Of Turbulent Flow Behavior In Helicopter Rotor Hub Wakes, Forrest Mobley

Masters Theses

The rotor hub is one of the most important features of all helicopters, as it provides the pilot a means for controlling the vehicle by changing the characteristics of the main and tail rotors. The hub also provides a structural foundation for the rotors and allows for the rotor blades to respond to aerodynamic forces while maintaining controllability and stability. Due to the inherent geometry and high rate of rotation, the rotor hub in its current form acts a large bluff body and is the primary source of parasite drag on the helicopter, despite its relatively small size. The rotor …

Towards Simulation Of Complex Ocean Flows: Analysis And Algorithm For Computation Of Coupled Partial Differential Equations, Wenbin Dong

Dissertations and Theses

The hybrid CFD models which usually consist of 2 sub-models, develop our capability to simulate many emerging problems with multiphysics and multiscale flows, especially for the coastal ocean flows interacted with local phenomena of interest. For most cases, the sub-models are connected with direct interpolation which is easy and workable. It becomes urgently needed to investigate the inner mechanism of such model integration as this simple method does not work well if the two sub-models are different in governing equations, numerical methods, and computational grids. Also, it can not treat complex flow structures as well as the balance in mass …

Pymoocfd - A Multi-Objective Optimization Framework For Cfd, George Martin Cunningham Love

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Modern computational resource have solidified the use of computer modeling as an integral part of the engineering design process. This is particularly impressive when it comes to high-dimensional models such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. CFD models are now capable of producing results with a level of confidence that would previously have required physical experimentation. Simultaneously, the development of machine learning techniques and algorithms has increased exponentially in recent years. This acceleration is also due to the widespread availability of modern computational resources. Thus far, the cross-over between these fields has been mostly focused on computer models with low …

Computer Modeling Of Solar Thermal System With Underground Storage Tank For Space Heating, Mohammad Yousef Mousa Naser

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Space heating is required in almost every dwelling across the country for different periods of time. The thermal energy needed to meet a heating demand can be supplied using different conventional and/or renewable technologies. Solar energy is one example of a renewable resource that can be used for supplying heating needs. It can be utilized either by using photovoltaic panels to generate electricity, that in turn can be used to operate heaters, or by using solar thermal panels. Solar thermal panels obtain higher operating efficiencies than photovoltaic panels, but solar energy for heating purposes suffers from a mismatch between supply …

Modeling Residence Time Distribution Of Chromatographic Perfusion Resin For Large Biopharmaceutical Molecules: A Computational Fluid Dynamic Study, Kevin Vehar

KGI Theses and Dissertations

The need for production processes of large biotherapeutic particles, such as virus-based particles and extracellular vesicles, has risen due to increased demand in the development of vaccinations, gene therapies, and cancer treatments. Liquid chromatography plays a significant role in the purification process and is routinely used with therapeutic protein production. However, performance with larger macromolecules is often inconsistent, and parameter estimation for process development can be extremely time- and resource-intensive. This thesis aimed to utilize advances in computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling to generate a first-principle model of the chromatographic process while minimizing model parameter estimation's physical resource demand. Specifically, …

Particle Injection Simulation On Cold Spray Technology, Christopher A. Santini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a useful tool when it comes to research in the fields of Aerodynamics, Turbomachinery, and is used in several other fields of research. CFD is an important tool in the engineering industry because it allows for understanding and evaluation of a new design, this can lead to advancements in developing a more efficient and effective design. This tool helps in the understanding of the flow phenomena and how it can interact with its surroundings. One of the main reasons in the use of CFD is to reduce the cost of testing a design by running …

Magnetic Control Of Transport Of Particles And Droplets In Low Reynolds Number Shear Flows, Jie Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

“Magnetic particles and droplets have been used in a wide range applications including biomedicine, biological analysis and chemical reaction. The manipulation of magnetic microparticles or microdroplets in microscale fluid environments is one of the most critical processes in the systems and platforms based on microfluidic technology. The conventional methods are based on magnetic forces to manipulate magnetic particles or droplets in a viscous fluid.

In contrast to conventional magnetic separation method, several recent experimental and theoretical studies have demonstrated a different way to manipulate magnetic non-spherical particles by using a uniform magnetic field in the microchannel. However, the fundamental mechanism …

A Cfd Study Of Steady Fully Developed Laminar Flow Through A 90-Degree Bend Pipe With A Square Cross-Sectional Area, Subodh Sushant Toraskar

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Fluid flow through a closed curved conduit has always been a topic of extensive research, as it has many practical and industrial applications. The flow is generally characterized by a presence of secondary flow, vortical motions and pressure losses for different flow regimes. These observed irregularities may positively or negatively impact the flow. They are beneficial for cases where mixing of fluids is required, usually observed for multiphase flow regimes or detrimental for cases involving particles in the fluid. There are also instances where a particle-laden fluid transported through the curved pipe was directly related to corrosion- erosion related problems. …

Transformation Of Nonlinear Waves In The Presence Of Wind, Current, And Vegetation, Haifei Chen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Accurate prediction of extreme wave events is crucial for the safe maritime activities and offshore operations. Improved knowledge of wave dissipation mechanisms due to breaking and vegetation leads to accurate wave forecast, protecting life and property along the coast. The scope of the thesis is to examine the wave transformations in the presence of wind, current, and vegetation, using a two-phase flow solver based on the open-source platform OpenFOAM. The Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are coupled with a Volume of Fluid (VOF) surface capturing scheme and a turbulence closure model. This RANS-VOF model is adapted to develop a numerical wind-wave-current …

A High Quality, Eulerian 3d Fluid Solver In C++, Lejon Anthony Mcgowan

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Fluids are a part of everyday life, yet are one of the hardest elements to properly render in computer graphics. Water is the most obvious entity when thinking of what a fluid simulation can achieve (and it is indeed the focus of this project), but many other aspects of nature, like fog, clouds, and particle effects. Real-time graphics like video games employ many heuristics to approximate these effects, but large-scale renderers aim to simulate these effects as closely as possible.

In this project, I wish to achieve effects of the latter nature. Using the Eulerian technique of discrete grids, I …

A Physics-Based Approach To Modeling Wildland Fire Spread Through Porous Fuel Beds, Tingting Tang

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

Wildfires are becoming increasingly erratic nowadays at least in part because of climate change. CFD (computational fluid dynamics)-based models with the potential of simulating extreme behaviors are gaining increasing attention as a means to predict such behavior in order to aid firefighting efforts. This dissertation describes a wildfire model based on the current understanding of wildfire physics. The model includes physics of turbulence, inhomogeneous porous fuel beds, heat release, ignition, and firebrands. A discrete dynamical system for flow in porous media is derived and incorporated into the subgrid-scale model for synthetic-velocity large-eddy simulation (LES), and a general porosity-permeability model is …

Computational Modeling Of A Williams Cross Flow Turbine, Sajjan Pokhrel

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Hydropower is not only the most used renewable energy source in the United States, but in the world. While it is well known that large hydropower facilities, like the Hoover Dam, provide large amounts of electrical power, there is also a tremendous opportunity for hydroelectric power generation from small scale facilities that has largely been overlooked. The work being presented here studies a new cross flow turbine called the Williams Cross Flow Turbine (WCFT), which was designed to extract electric energy from low head, run-of-the-river, small hydropower sites. To spur the implementation of the WCFT in small hydropower applications, and …

Multiscale Wind Modelling For Sustainability And Resilience, Djordje Romanic

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The research presented herein is a mix of meteorological and wind engineering disciplines. In many cases, there is a gap between these two fields and this thesis is an attempt to bridge that gap through multiscale wind modelling approaches. Data and methods used in this study cover a multitude of spatial and temporal scales. Applications are in the fields of sustainability and resilience. This relationship between multiscale wind modelling and sustainability and resilience is investigated examining several case studies of three different developments: urban, rural and coastal.

An urban wind modelling methodology is proposed and applied for a specific development …

Numerical And Experimental Study Of Liquid Breakup Process In Solid Rocket Motor Nozzle, Yi-Hsin Yen

Theses and Dissertations

Rocket propulsion is an important travel method for space exploration and national defense, rockets needs to be able to withstand wide range of operation environment and also stable and precise enough to carry sophisticated payload into orbit, those engineering requirement makes rocket becomes one of the state of the art industry. The rocket family have been classified into two major group of liquid and solid rocket based on the fuel phase of liquid or solid state. The solid rocket has the advantages of simple working mechanism, less maintenance and preparing procedure and higher storage safety, those characters of solid rocket …

Project Oasis: Optimizing Aquaponic Systems To Improve Sustainability, Siddharth Nigam, Paige Balcom

Honors Theses and Capstones

Started in Fall 2015, Project OASIS (Optimizing Aquaponic Systems to Improve Sustainability) is an interdisciplinary capstone project with the goal of designing a sustainable and affordable small-scale aquaponic system for use in developing nations to tackle the problems of malnutrition and food insecurity. Aquaponics is a symbiotic relationship between fish and vegetables growing together in a recirculating system. The project’s goals were to minimize energy consumption and construction costs while using universally available materials. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software OpenFOAM was used to create transient and steady-state models of fish tanks to visualize velocity profiles, streamlines, and particle movement. …

Numerical Investigation Of Impact Of Relative Humidity On Droplet Accumulation And Film Cooling, Luz Irene Bugarin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

During the summer, high inlet temperatures affect the power output of gas turbine systems. Evaporative coolers have gained popularity as an inlet cooling method for these systems. Wet compression has been one of the common evaporative cooling methods implemented to increase power output of gas turbine systems due to its simple installation and low cost. This process involves injection of water droplets into the continuous phase of compressor to reduce the temperature of the flow entering the compressor and in turn increase the power output of the whole gas turbine system. This study focused on a single stage rotor-stator compressor …

Investigation Of Heat Transfer And Flow Using Ribs Within Gas Turbine Blade Cooling Passage: Experimental And Hybrid Les/Rans Modeling, Sourabh Kumar

Theses and Dissertations

Gas turbines are extensively used for aircraft propulsion, land based power generation and various industrial applications. Developments in innovative gas turbine cooling technology enhance the efficiency and power output, with an increase in turbine rotor inlet temperatures. These advancements of turbine cooling have allowed engine design to exceed normal material temperature limits. For internal cooling design, techniques for heat extraction from the surfaces exposed to hot stream are based on the increase of heat transfer areas and on promotion of turbulence of the cooling flow. In this study, it is obtained by casting repeated continuous V and broken V shaped …

High Order Finite Elements For Lagrangian Computational Fluid Dynamics, Truman Everett Ellis

Master's Theses

A general finite element method is presented to solve the Euler equations in a Lagrangian reference frame. This FEM framework allows for separate arbitrarily high order representation of kinematic and thermodynamic variables. An accompanying hydrodynamics code written in Matlab is presented as a test-bed to experiment with various basis function choices. A wide range of basis function pairs are postulated and a few choices are developed further, including the bi-quadratic Q2-Q1d and Q2-Q2d elements. These are compared with a corresponding pair of low order bi-linear elements, traditional Q1-Q0 and sub-zonal pressure Q1-Q1d. Several test problems are considered including static convergence …

Employing The Spectral Collocation Method In The Modeling Of Laminar Tube Flow Dynamics, Corey Michael Thibeault

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The spectral collocation method is a numerical approximation technique that seeks the solution of a differential equation using a finite series of infinitely differentiable basis functions. This inherently global technique enjoys an exponential rate of convergence and has proven to be extremely effective in computational fluid dynamics. This paper presents a basic review of the spectral collocation method. The derivation is driven with an example of the approximation to the solution of a 1D Helmholtz equation. A Matlab code modeling two fluid dynamics problems is then given. First, the classic two-dimensional Graetz problem is simulated and compared to an analytical …

Experimental And Numerical Study Of A Proton Exchange Membrane Electrolyzer For Hydrogen Production, Sachin S. Deshmukh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Hydrogen as a fuel source has received attention from researchers globally due to its potential to replace fossil based fuels for energy production. Research is being performed on hydrogen production, storage and utilization methods to make its use economically feasible relative to current energy sources. The PEM electrolyzer is used to produce hydrogen and oxygen using water and electricity. Focus of our study is to provide a benchmark experiment and numerical model of a single cell electrolyzer that can assist in improving the current state of understanding of this system. Parametric analysis of an experimental cell was performed to understand …