Analysis of the Influence of the Conduction Sub-Model Formulation on the Modeling of Laser-Induced Incandescence of Diesel Soot Aggregates

Laser-induced incandescence (LII) is a powerful diagnostic technique allowing quantifying soot emissions in flames and at the exhaust of combustion systems. It can be advantageously coupled with modeling approaches to infer information on the physical properties of combustion-generated particles (including their size), which implies formulating and solving balance equations accounting for laser-excited soot heating and cooling processes. Properly estimating soot diameter by time-resolved LII (TiRe-LII), nevertheless, requires correctly evaluating the thermal accommodation coefficient α T driving the energy transferred by heat conduction between soot aggregates and their surroundings. To analyze such an aspect, an extensive set of LII signals has been acquired in a Diesel spray flame before being simulated using a refined model built upon expressions accounting for soot heating by absorption, annealing, and oxidation as well as cooling by radiation, sublimation, conduction, and thermionic emission. Within this framework, different conduction sub-models have been tested while a corrective factor allowing the particle aggregate properties to be taken into account has also been considered to simulate the so-called shielding effect. Using a fitting procedure coupling design of experiments and a genetic algorithm-based solver, the implemented model has been parameterized so as to obtain simulated data merging on a single curve with experimentally monitored ones. Eventually, values of the thermal accommodation coefficient have been estimated with each tested conduction sub-model while the influence of the aggregate size on the so-inferred α T has been analyzed.

Quantifying the Thermal Accommodation Coefficient for Iron Surfaces Using Molecular Dynamics Simulations

With nanotechnology becoming an increasingly important field in contemporary science, there is a growing demand for a better understanding of energy exchange on the nanoscale. Techniques, such as time-resolved laser-induced incandescence, for example, require accurate models of gas-surface interaction to correctly predict nanoparticle characteristics. The present work uses molecular dynamics to define the thermal accommodation coefficient of various gases on iron surfaces. A more in depth analysis examines the scattering distributions from the surfaces and examines how well existing scattering kernels and classical theories can represent these distributions. The molecular dynamics-derived values are also compared to recent experimental time-resolved laser-induced incandescence studies aimed at evaluating the thermal accommodation coefficient across a range of surface-gas combinations.

Design of an Experiment to Measure the Thermal Accommodation Coefficient Between Helium and Stainless-Steel in Concentric Cylinders

Heat transfer through a 1 mm gap between two concentric cylinders representing the gap between a fuel support basket and a canister is experimentally and numerically investigated. The objective of this work is to study rarefied gas heat transfer in a simple geometry, and to measure the thermal accommodation coefficient at the interface between stainless steel and rarefied helium. The thermal accommodation coefficient is used to characterize the interaction between gas molecules and wall at the molecular level. It is important to determine its value with precision for better determination of heat transfer at low pressure. The experimental procedure consists of measuring the temperature difference between the inner and outer cylinders as the pressure is decreased in the gap. By knowing the heat flux across the gap the thermal accommodation coefficient can be extracted from the theoretical expression relating the temperature difference to the radial heat flux. Three-dimensional simulations using the ANSYS/Fluent commercial code are conducted to assess on the design of the experimental apparatus. These simulations confirmed that the apparatus design is effective to study the heat transfer across rarefied gas and to determine the thermal accommodation coefficient for helium on stainless steel surface.

Adsorption-Based Thermal Rectifier

Controlling thermal energy transport (thermal diode) for the desired direction is crucial to improve the efficiency of thermal energy transport, conversion, and storage systems as electrical diodes significantly impact on modern electronic systems. The degree of thermal rectification is measured by the difference between the heat transfer rate in favorable and unfavorable directions to the heat transfer rate in the unfavorable direction. A gas-filled, nano-gap structure with two different surface coatings is considered to design the thermal rectifier. In such a structure where the characteristic length scale is similar to the order of the mean free path of the fluid particles (Knudsen flow regime), the effective thermal conductivity is dominantly controlled by the gas-surface interaction, i.e., thermal accommodation coefficient. For the thermal rectification, the adsorption-based, nonlinear thermal accommodation coefficient change is a key design parameter. Here, these are examined using the kinetic theory for various pressure and temperature ranges. Optimal material selections are also discussed.