Integration of Virtual Reality and CFD Techniques for Thermal Fluid Education

Author(s):  
Peng Zhou ◽  
Xiuling Wang ◽  
Ulises Morales ◽  
Xiaoli Yang

Engineering courses such as thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and heat transfer always involve many abstract math, physics concepts and equations — which are difficult to teach and understand. As fundamental courses in engineering programs, they are sometimes taught in big class size — where students may not receive adequate attention and assistance from instructors. To improve the teaching and learning efficiency, we proposed to develop virtual reality based interactive modules for learning computational fluid dynamics. In this paper, case-study learning module is demonstrated for conduction heat transfer. The programming languages of C# and Unity3D were used for the software development. Computational fluid dynamics simulation results obtained from ANSYS/FLUENT were incorporated in the program. The program has the integrated modules of mobility, interactivity, and controllability for the 3D modeling and simulations. Each module was developed separately for facilitating the program management, extension, and upgrades in the future. The developed interactive programs, incorporating rich, interactive, and engaging learning contexts, will help students gain and apply knowledge to solve real-world problems in mechanical engineering.

Author(s):  
Hossein Mohammad Ghasemi ◽  
Neda Gilani ◽  
Jafar Towfighi Daryan

A new arrangement of side-wall burners of an industrial furnace was studied by three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. This simulation was conducted on ten calculation domain. Finite rate/eddy dissipation model was used as a combustion model. Discrete ordinate model (DOM) was considered as radiation model. Furthermore, weighted sum of gray gas model (WSGGM) was used to calculate radiative gas properties. Tube skin temperature and heat flux profiles were obtained by solving mass, momentum, and energy equations. Moreover, fuel rate variation was considered as an effective parameter. A base flow rate of fuel (m˙=0.0695kg/s) was assigned and different ratios (0.25 m˙, 0.5 m˙, 2 m˙, and 4 m˙) were assigned to investigate the heat distribution over the furnace. Resulted temperature and heat profiles were obtained in nonuniform mode using the proposed wall burner arrangement. According to the results, despite increased heat transfer coefficient of about 34% for m˙–4 m˙, temperature profile for this rate is too high and is harmful for tube metallurgy. Also, the proper range for fuel rate variation was determined as 0.5–2 m˙. In this range, heat transfer coefficient and Nusselt number for m˙–2 m˙ were increased by 21% and for m˙–0.25 m˙ were decreased by about 28%.


Author(s):  
Sing Ngie David Chua ◽  
Boon Kean Chan ◽  
Soh Fong Lim

Thermal accumulation in a car cabin under direct exposure to sunlight can be extremely critical due to the risk of heatstroke especially to children who are left unattended in the car. There are very limited studies in the literature to understand the thermal behaviour of a car that is parked in an open car park space and the findings are mostly inconsistent among researchers. In this paper, the studies of thermal accumulation in an enclosed vehicle by experimental and computational fluid dynamics simulation approaches were carried out. An effective and economical method to reduce the heat accumulation was proposed. Different test conditions such as fully enclosed, fully enclosed with sunshade on front windshield and different combinations of window gap sizes were experimented and presented. Eight points of measurement were recorded at different locations in the car cabin and the results were used as the boundary conditions for the three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulation. The computational fluid dynamics software used was ANSYS FLUENT 16.0. The results showed that the application of sunshade helped to reduce thermal accumulation at car cabin by 11.5%. The optimum combination of windows gap size was found to be with 4-cm gap on all four windows which contributed to a 21.1% reduction in car cabin temperature. The results obtained from the simulations were comparable and in agreement with the experimental tests.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 41-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Fuerst Pacheco ◽  
Diego Alves de Miranda

The growing demand for energy efficiency gains in vehicles has led to several advances in more technological and efficient driving units, projects using lighter and more resistant materials and, in particular, a deeper study of aerodynamic studies in order to understand the fluid flow around the object of study. This work presents an aerodynamic study for a vehicle of high-energy efficiency, through computational fluid dynamics simulation in Ansys Fluent software. The main objective is to obtain the traction and drag force vectors acting on the vehicle at different speeds and to better understand the airflow before, during and after contact with the vehicle. With the possession of results, it was facilitated the implementation of improvements that enabled the vehicle to operate even more efficiently.


2019 ◽  
Vol 90 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 1262-1276
Author(s):  
Pengpeng Cheng ◽  
Daoling Chen ◽  
Jianping Wang

In order to study the influence of underwear on microclimate heat transfer among different age groups, this study measured the temperature of the microclimate layer corresponding to the main parts of the human body or the key parts that affect average skin temperature. A computational fluid dynamics numerical model was then used to simulate the influence of underwear on heat transfer between the human body and the microenvironment and to explore the physical phenomenon. The results obtained show that underwear has a great influence on the average temperature of the microclimatic air layer, especially the air layer at the upper arm, forearm, and thigh. The findings of this study provide fundamental knowledge to improve the thermal comfort of underwear.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajendra Prasad K S ◽  
Krishna V ◽  
Sachin Bharadwaj ◽  
Babu Rao Ponangi

Abstract Modelling of turbulence heat transfer for supercritical fluids using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software is always challenging due to the drastic property variations near critical point. Use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) along with numerical methods have shown promising results in predicting heat transfer coefficients of heat exchangers. In this study, accuracy of four different turbulent models available in the commercial CFD software - Ansys Fluent is investigated against the available experimental results. The k-e Re Normalization Group (RNG) model with enhanced wall treatment is found to be the best-suited turbulence model. Further, K-e RNG Turbulence Model is used in CFD for parametric analysis to generate the data for ANN studies. A total of 1,34,698 data samples were generated and fed into the ANN program to develop an equation that can predict the heat transfer coefficient. It was found that, for the considered range of values the absolute average relative deviation is 3.49%.


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