Circular Cylinder Exposed to Cross Flow Fluid Forces – Parameters of Influence – Limits of Numerical Models

Author(s):  
Christoph Reichel ◽  
Klaus Strohmeier

In many technical fields, e.g. heat exchangers, circular cylinders are involved in Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) problems. Therefore correct frequency and magnitude of fluid forces, respectively Strouhal number, drag and lift coefficient are needed. If fluid forces are evaluated with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), mostly flow around a rigid cylinder is used to verify model and numerical methods. Unfortunately experimental as well as numerical results show great variation, making verification and testing of models difficult. Reynolds number is regarded as main influencing parameter for a rigid cylinder in cross flow. Most of experimental deviations can be related to other parameters, which differ from experiment to experiment. In this paper such parameters are specified and it is shown, that a closer look is needed, if one really wants to verify a model. Besides experimental results, which can be found in literature, some parameters are investigated by numerical simulation. Like experiments CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations show a huge bandwidth of results, even when the same turbulence model is used. Flow around cylinders separates over a wide range of Reynolds numbers. It will be demonstrated that, using CFD, large deviations in fluid forces can often be related to miscalculation of the point of separation.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 168781401985729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdelrahman Kasem ◽  
Ahmad Gamal ◽  
Amr Hany ◽  
Hesham Gaballa ◽  
Karim Ahmed ◽  
...  

The article aims to prove the effectiveness of the proposed unmanned air vehicle design (The Propulsive Wing) through numerical and experimental means. The propulsive wing unmanned air vehicle is a completely new class of unmanned air vehicle, making disruptive changes in the aircraft industry. It is based on a distributed cross-flow electric fan propulsion system. When the fan starts to operate, the flow is drawn from the suction surface, provided by energy through the fan and expelled out of the airfoil trailing edge (TE). This causes a significant lift increase and drag reduction with respect to ordinary aircrafts, making it perfect for applications requiring low cruise speed such as firefighting, agriculture, and aerial photography. In this early stage of the investigation, our main aim is to prove that this design is applicable and the expected aerodynamic and propulsion improvements are achievable. This is done through a two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics investigation of the flow around an airfoil with an embedded cross-flow fan near its TE. A scaled wind tunnel model of the same geometry used in the computational fluid dynamics investigation was manufactured and used to perform wind tunnel testing. The computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnel results are compared for validation. Furthermore, an unmanned air vehicle model was designed and manufactured to prove that the propulsive wing concept is flyable. The article shows that the aerodynamic forces developed on the cross-flow fan airfoil are not only functions of Reynolds number and angle of attack as for standard airfoils but also function of the fan rotational speed. The results show the great effect of the rotational speed of fan on lift augmentation and thrust generation through the high momentum flow getting out of the fan nozzle. Wind tunnel tests show that the suction effect of the fan provides stall free operation up to very high angles of attack (40 degrees) leading to unprecedented values of lift coefficient up to 5.8. The flight test conducted showed the great potential of the new aircraft to perform the expected low cruise speed and high angles of attack flight.


2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 1029-1040 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmina Bogdanovic-Jovanovic ◽  
Dragica Milenkovic ◽  
Dragan Svrkota ◽  
Bozidar Bogdanovic ◽  
Zivan Spasic

As the global demand for energy grows, numerous studies in the field of energy efficiency are stimulated, and one of them is certainly the use of pumps in turbine operating mode. In order to reduce time necessary to determine pump characteristic in turbine operating mode problem was studied by computational fluid dynamics approach. The paper describes various problems faced during modeling (pump and turbine mode) and the approaches used to resolve the problems. Since in the majority of applications, the turbine is a pump running in reverse, many attempts have been made to predict the turbine performance from the known pump performance, but only for best efficiency point. This approach does not provide reliable data for the design of the system with maximum energy efficiency and does not allow the determination of the head for a wide range of flow rates. This paper presents an example of centrifugal norm pump operating in both (pump and turbine) regime and comparison of experimentally obtained results and computational fluid dynamics simulations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 121 (1246) ◽  
pp. 1795-1807 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Bekemeyer ◽  
R. Thormann ◽  
S. Timme

ABSTRACTSeveral critical load cases during the aircraft design process result from atmospheric turbulence. Thus, rapidly performable and highly accurate dynamic response simulations are required to analyse a wide range of parameters. A method is proposed to predict dynamic loads on an elastically trimmed, large civil aircraft using computational fluid dynamics in conjunction with model reduction. A small-sized modal basis is computed by sampling the aerodynamic response at discrete frequencies and applying proper orthogonal decomposition. The linear operator of the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations plus turbulence model is then projected onto the subspace spanned by this basis. The resulting reduced system is solved at an arbitrary number of frequencies to analyse responses to 1-cos gusts very efficiently. Lift coefficient and surface pressure distribution are compared with full-order, non-linear, unsteady time-marching simulations to verify the method. Overall, the reduced-order model predicts highly accurate global coefficients and surface loads at a fraction of the computational cost, which is an important step towards the aircraft loads process relying on computational fluid dynamics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 1191-1203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mete Koken ◽  
Ismail Aydin ◽  
Akis Sahin

Purpose High head gates are commonly used in hydropower plants for flow regulation and emergence closure. Hydrodynamic downpull can be a critical parameter in design of the lifting mechanism. The purpose of this paper is to show that a simplified two-dimensional (2D) computational fluid dynamics solution can be used in the prediction of the downpull force on the gate lip by comparison of computed results to experimentally measured data. Design/methodology/approach In this study, ANSYS FLUENT CFD software was used to obtain 2D numerical solution for the flow field around a generic gate model located in a power intake structure which was previously used in an experimental study. Description of the flow domain, computational grid resolution, requirements on setting appropriate boundary conditions and methodology in describing downpull coefficient are discussed. Total number of 245 simulations for variable gate lip geometry and gate openings were run. The downpull coefficient evaluated from the computed pressure field as function of gate opening and lip angle are compared with the experimental results. Findings The computed downpull coefficient agrees well with the previous experimental results, except one gate with small lip angle where a separation bubble forms along the lip, which is responsible from this deviation. It is observed that three-dimensional (3D) effects are confined to the large gate openings where downpull is minimum or even reversed. Research limitations/implications In large gate openings, three dimensionality of the flow around gate slots plays an important role and departure from 2D solutions become more pronounced. In that case, one might need to perform a 3D solution instead. Practical implications This paper presents a very fast and accurate way to predict downpull force on high head gates in the absence of experimental data. Originality/value An extensive amount of simulations are run within the scope of this study. It is shown that knowing its limitations, 2D numerical models can be used to calculate downpull for a wide range of gate openings without the need of expensive experimental models.


Author(s):  
Ang Li ◽  
Shengmin Shi ◽  
Dixia Fan

Abstract Models of cylinders in the oscillatory flow can be found virtually everywhere in the marine industry, such as pump towers experiencing sloshing load in a LNG ship liquid tank. However, compared to the problem of a cylinder in the uniform flow, a cylinder in the oscillatory flow is less studied, let alone multiple cylinders. Therefore, we experimentally and numerically studied two identical circular cylinders oscillating in the still water with either a side-by-side or a tandem configuration for a wide range of Keulegan-Carpenter number and Stokes number β. The experiment result shows that the hydrodynamic performance of an oscillating cylinder pair in the still water is greatly altered due to the interference between the multiple structures with different configurations. In specific, compared to the single-cylinder case, the drag coefficient is greatly enhanced when two cylinders are placed side-by-side at a small gap ratio, while dual cylinders in a tandem configuration obtain a smaller drag coefficient and oscillating lift coefficient. In order to reveal the detailed flow physics that results in significant fluid forces alternations, the detailed flow visualization is provided by the numerical simulation: the small gap between two cylinders in a side-by-side configuration will result in a strong gap jet that enhances the energy dissipation and increase the drag, while due to the flow blocking effect for two cylinders in a tandem configuration, the drag coefficient decreases.


Processes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Minghan Luo ◽  
Wenjie Xu ◽  
Xiaorong Kang ◽  
Keqiang Ding ◽  
Taeseop Jeong

The ultraviolet photochemical degradation process is widely recognized as a low-cost, environmentally friendly, and sustainable technology for water treatment. This study integrated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and a photoreactive kinetic model to investigate the effects of flow characteristics on the contaminant degradation performance of a rotating annular photoreactor with a vacuum-UV (VUV)/UV process performed in continuous flow mode. The results demonstrated that the introduced fluid remained in intensive rotational movement inside the reactor for a wide range of inflow rates, and the rotational movement was enhanced with increasing influent speed within the studied velocity range. The CFD modeling results were consistent with the experimental abatement of methylene blue (MB), although the model slightly overestimated MB degradation because it did not fully account for the consumption of OH radicals from byproducts generated in the MB decomposition processes. The OH radical generation and contaminant degradation efficiency of the VUV/UV process showed strong correlation with the mixing level in a photoreactor, which confirmed the promising potential of the developed rotating annular VUV reactor in water treatment.


Fluids ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 204
Author(s):  
Kamran Fouladi ◽  
David J. Coughlin

This report presents the development of a fluid-structure interaction model using commercial Computational fluid dynamics software and in-house developed User Defined Function to simulate the motion of a trout Department of Mechanical Engineering, Widener University holding station in a moving water stream. The oscillation model used in this study is based on the observations of trout swimming in a respirometry tank in a laboratory experiment. The numerical simulations showed results that are consistent with laboratory observations of a trout holding station in the tank without obstruction and trout entrained to the side of the cylindrical obstruction. This paper will be helpful in the development of numerical models for the hydrodynamic analysis of bioinspired unmanned underwater vehicle systems.


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