Simulation of Contaminant Dispersal in an Apartment Building

Bio-terrorism events (like the 2001 anthrax attacks) accentuate the importance of countering these incidents. In order to develop reliable countermeasures for these events, it is essential to understand the associated transport processes. The transport processes involved pose challenges as they occur over wide ranges of spatial and temporal scales. CONTAMW, a multi zone indoor air quality and ventilation analysis program is used to predict the contaminant dispersal in an apartment building. Detailed simulation results and analysis of controlled release of propylene within a generic apartment building is presented. A zonal analysis is carried out for the entire apartment building (using CONTAMW) to obtain time histories of propylene concentration in different zones. The simulations provide the dispersion, transport and contaminant concentration within each zone of the apartment. This study also considers the effect of flow obstructions and ventilation rates on contaminant dispersal. The results are validated with the experimental results reported in Cybyk et al. (1999). We have also simulated propylene transport in the apartment with FDS, a large eddy simulation model.

Simulation of Acoustic Streaming in a Resonator

Formation of vortical flow structures in a rectangular enclosure due to acoustic streaming is investigated numerically. The oscillatory flow field in the enclosure is created by the vibration of a vertical side wall of the enclosure. The frequency of the wall vibration is chosen such that a standing wave forms in the enclosure. The interaction of this standing wave with the horizontal solid walls leads to the production of Rayleigh type acoustic streaming flow patterns in the enclosure. All four walls of the enclosure considered are thermally insulated. The fully compressible form of the Navier-Stokes equations is considered and an explicit time-marching algorithm is used to explicitly track the acoustic waves. Numerical solutions are obtained by employing a highly accurate flux corrected transport (FCT) algorithm for the convection terms. A time-splitting technique is used to couple the viscous and diffusion terms of the full Navier-Stokes equations. Non-uniform grid structure is employed in the computations. The simulation of the primary oscillatory flow and the secondary (steady) streaming flows in the enclosure is performed. Streaming flow patterns are obtained by time averaging the primary oscillatory flow velocity distributions. The effect of the amount of wall displacement on the formation of the oscillatory flow field and the streaming structures are studied. Computations indicate that the nonlinearity of the acoustic field increases with increasing amount of the vibration amplitude. The form and the strength of the secondary flow associated with the oscillatory flow field and viscous effects are found to be strongly correlated to the maximum displacement of the vibrating wall. Total number of acoustic streaming cells per wavelength is also determined by the strength and the level of the nonlinearity of the sound field in the resonator.

Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer Around Two Circular Cylinders in Side-by-Side Arrangement

Incompressible flows passing through two circular cylinders in side-by-side arrangement are investigated numerically. The calculations are carried out with pitch ratios from 1.1 to 2.0 at Reynolds number of 1000. The flow and temperature fields, flow interference, and the local and the mean Nusselt numbers are studied in this research. It is observed that for the pitch ratios in the range of 2.0 and 1.5, the emerging jet between cylinders deflects and one wide and one narrow wakes behind the cylinders are formed. The gap flow velocity increases as the pitch ratio decreases and consequently increases the mean Nusselt number of the cylinders. As the pitch ratio decreases and is less than 1.5, the jet deflection is more severe and the gap flow velocity starts to decrease slowly, which results in reducing the mean Nusselt number of the cylinders. Due to the rapid reduction of the narrow wake size, the mean Nusselt number of the cylinder with narrow wake shows an uprising tendency for the decreasing pitch ratio less than 1.2.

Rheological Aspects of Drops Deforming in Finite Reynolds Number Oscillatory Extensional Flows

The evolving morphology of droplets in a flowing emulsion determines its rheological properties. A two-way interaction between drops and the flow governs the rheological stresses arising from drop deformation. In this paper, the rheology of droplet emulsions under oscillatory extensional flow is investigated using direct numerical simulation (DNS). The deformation of a three dimensional drop is simulated. The rheological responses are related with the interface morphology using Bachelor’s stress formulation [6]. Detailed investigation of the variation of parameters such as interfacial tension, flow frequency and inertia displayed complex non-Newtonian response of the emulsion that will have broad implication in industrial applications. The results are explained and discussed with a simple model for the drop dynamics.

Numerical Analysis of the Turbulent Flow Field Applied to Thermal Spallation Drilling

Thermal spallation is a possible drilling technique which consists of using hot supersonic jets as heat source to perforate hard rocks at high rates. This work presents a numerical analysis of a typical spallation drilling configuration, by the finite volume method. The time-averaged conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy are solved to determine the turbulent compressible gas phase flow field. Turbulence is predicted by the classical high Reynolds number κ-ε model, as well as with a low Reynolds number κ-ε model. The influence of the jet Reynolds number is investigated. Special attention is given to the rock surface temperature, since its accurate determination is required to predict spallation rates under field-drilling conditions.

Stefan Number-Insensitive Numerical Simulation of the Enthalpy Method for Stefan Problems Using the Space-Time Conservation Element and Solution Element Method

An improvement is introduced to the conservation element and solution element (CE/SE) phase change scheme presented previously. The improvement addresses a well known weakness in numerical simulations of the enthalpy method when the Stefan number, (the ratio of sensible to latent heat) is small (less than 0.1). Behavior of the improved scheme, at the limit of small Stefan numbers, is studied and compared with that of the original scheme. It is shown that high dissipative errors, associated with small Stefan numbers, do not occur using the new scheme.

Vehicle Thermal Management Simulation Using a Rapid Omni-Tree Based Adaptive Cartesian Mesh Generation Methodology

CFD simulation of vehicle under-hood and under-body poses several challenges. Specifically, the complexity of the geometry involved makes the use of traditional mesh generation approaches, based on the boundary-to-interior methodology, impractical and time consuming. The current work presents the use of an interior-to-boundary method wherein the need for creating a ‘water-tight’ surface mesh is not a pre-requisite for volume mesh generation. The application of the new method is demonstrated for an actual passenger vehicle under-hood model with nearly a hundred components. Coupled radiation/convection simulations are performed to obtain the complete airflow and thermal map of the engine compartment. Results are validated with test data. The new method results in significant gains in efficiency over traditional approaches allowing the simulation tool to be used effectively in the vehicle development process.

Simulation of Flow Around a Static and Oscillating in Pitch NACA 0015 Airfoil Using URANS and DES

This paper presents numerical simulations of the flow around a NACA 0015 airfoil at static and dynamic stall. The treatment of these configurations is a very challenging task for CFD applications. The turbulent flow around the static and in pitch oscillation airfoil is computed using different approaches: 2D RANS, 3D RANS and DES methodologies and with finer and finer meshes in order to try to reach a space converged solution. The main conclusion of the paper is that the prediction of static and all the more dynamic stall is not mature with present modeling capabilities.

CFD Studies on a Large Diameter Jet Impingement Flow

This paper presents computational study for a large diameter (216 mm) and small space ratios (S/D = 0.25 and 0.5) jet impingement flow. CFD-ACE code was used as the computational tools; the code was first validated by comparing its predictions with both CFD and experimental data from the literature. Then, the study was performed for two different Reynolds numbers: 7600, 17700 and two different space ratios: 0.25 and 0.5. Also two different turbulence models were utilized in this study: low Reynolds number turbulent k-ε and k-ω. The CFD results were compared with flow visualization results conducted at the University of Minnesota for the same configurations. The impact of choosing different inlet conditions on the CFD flow field was examined. The k-ε model showed greater sensitivity to the selection of the inlet conditions. Moreover, the k-ω model showed much better agreement with the experimental data than the k-ε model.

Unsteady Fluid Dynamics in a Semi-Closed Cavity

Results are presented for unsteady, time-true simulations of a shear driven cavity started impulsively from rest. The cavity is partially occluded by slits on its upper side, thereby forming a Helmholtz resonator type of geometry. Simulations with Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes solvers at the laminar Reynolds number Re = 3,000, for a spanwise aspect-ratio equal to 3, showed that the flow is unsteady and a-periodic over a normalised time of one hundred units. Taylor-Go¨rtler spanwise vortices appear early in the simulation (flow time 3 or 4 units); these vortices have a relatively short time span, and completely disappear at a flow time equal to 90. This study also reports about the findings on the secondary eddies (upstream and wall vortices), on the vortex filaments that are drawn from the cavity floor, and on the mass transport properties of the flow.