Engineering Commons^™

Benchmarking Of A Mobile Phone Particle Image Velocimetry System, David Armijo

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

One of the most important tools in a fluid dynamics laboratory is a particle image velocimetry (PIV) system. This system can measure the speed of a fluid flow simply by taking high-speed images of the motion of the fluid, then applying PIV cross-correlation software to calculate speed from the resulting images. The mI-PIV project is in the process of designing a new method of performing PIV by putting the cross-correlation software on a mobile phone application, called mobile Instructional PIV (mI-PIV). This system is an innovative stepping stone in making PIV systems more widely available. It is designed to be …

Fluted Films Caused By Gravity Driven Water Drainage From Vertical Tubes, Matthew B. Jones

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

When a stationary mass of water in a vertical tube is suddenly released, it creates a variety of artistic shapes and behaviors as it escapes the tube exit. As the descending water accelerates in the tube, friction along the tube wall slows the outer radius, resulting in a moving film entrained on the tube that trails the main body of water. When this film exits the tube, surface tension, gravity, and inertia interact to cause the film to create a wide variety of shapes, including jets, tubes, water bells, champagne glasses, and bubbles; rich forms that appear in other natural …

Computational Fluid Dynamics Validation Of Buoyant Turbulent Flow Heat Transfer, Jared M. Iverson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is commonly used to visualize and understand complicated fluid flow and heat transfer in many industries. It is imperative to validate the CFD computer models in order to avoid costly design choices where experimentation cannot be used to ratify the predictions of computer models. Assessments of CFD computer models in the literature conclude that significant errors occur in computer model predictions of fluid flow influenced by buoyancy forces.

The Experimental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State University constructed a wind tunnel with which to perform experiments on buoyancy induced fluid flow. The experiments measured the heat …