Optical Tomography With a Least Square Finite Element Formulation of the Collimated Irradiation in Frequency Domain

This paper presents a numerical study of optical tomography in frequency domain for the reconstruction of optical properties of scattering and absorbing media with collimated irradiation light sources. The forward model is a least square finite element formulation of the collimated irradiation problem where the intensity is separated into its collimated and scattered parts. This model does not use any empirical stabilization and moreover the collimated source direction is taken into account. The inversion uses a gradient type minimization method where the gradient is computed through an adjoint formulation. Scaling is used to avoid numerical round errors, as the output readings at detectors are very low. Numerical reconstructions of optical properties of absorbing and scattering media with simulated data (noised and noise-free) are achieved in a complex geometry with satisfactory results. The results show that complex geometries are well handled with the proposed method.

Numerical Modeling of Radiative and Reactive Flow Field Around a Blunt Body at Hypersonic Regimes

A numerical method for calculation of strong radiation for two-dimensional reactive air flow field is developed. The governing equations are taken to be two dimensional, compressible Reynolds-average Navier-Stokes and species transport equations. Also, radiation heat flux in energy equation is evaluated using a model of discrete ordinate method. The model used S4 approximation to reduce the governing system of integro-differential equations to coupled set of partial differential equations. A multiband model is used to construct absorption coefficients. Tangent slab approximation is assumed to determine the characteristic parameters needed in the Discrete Ordinates Method. The turbulent diffusion and heat fluxes are modeled by Baldwin and Lomax method. The flow solution is obtained with a fully implicit time marching method. A thermochemical nonequilibrium formulation appropriate to hypersonic transitional flow of air is presented. The method is compared with existing experimental results and good agreement is observed.

Computational Study of Gas Turbine Blade Cooling Channel

It has been a common practice to use cooling passages in gas turbine blade in order to keep the blade temperatures within the operating range. Insufficiently cooled blades are subject to oxidation, to cause creep rupture, and even to cause melting of the material. To design better cooling passages, better understanding of the flow patterns within the complicated flow channels is essential. The interactions between secondary flows and separation lead to very complex flow patterns. To accurately simulate these flows and heat transfer, both refined turbulence models and higher-order numerical schemes are indispensable for turbine designers to improve the cooling performance. Power output and the efficiency of turbine are completely related to gas firing temperature from chamber. The increment of gas firing temperature is limited by the blade material properties. Advancements in the cooling technology resulted in high firing temperatures with acceptable material temperatures. To better design the cooling channels and to improve the heat transfer, many researchers are studying the flow patterns inside the cooling channels both experimentally and computationally. In this paper, the authors present the performance of three turbulence models using TEACH software code in comparison with the experimental values. To test the performance, a square duct with rectangular ribs oriented at 90° and 45° degree and placed at regular intervals. The channel also has bleed holes. The normalized Nusselt number obtained from simulation are validated with that of experiment. The Reynolds number is set at 10,000 for both the simulation and experiment. The interactions between secondary flows and separation lead to very complex flow patterns. To accurately simulate these flows and heat transfer, both refined turbulence models and higher-order numerical schemes are indispensable for turbine designers to improve the cooling performance. The three-dimensional turbulent flows and heat transfer are numerically studied by using several different turbulence models, such as non-linear low-Reynolds number k-omega and Reynolds Stress (RSM) models. In k-omega model the cubic terms are included to represent the effects of extra strain-rates such as streamline curvature and three-dimensionality on both turbulence normal and shear stresses. The finite volume difference method incorporated with the higher-order bounded interpolation scheme has been employed in the present study. The outcome of this study will help determine the best suitable turbulence model for future studies.

An Experimental Investigation of a New Hybrid Film Cooling Scheme

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the film cooling performance of a New Hybrid Film Cooling Scheme using Thermochromic Liquid Crystal technique. The new scheme has been designed to improve the film cooling performance of gas turbine airfoils. The scheme includes two consecutive film hole configurations with interior bending. The cooling performance of the new scheme was analyzed across blowing ratios of 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5, at a density ratio of 0.94. The results showed that the new scheme enhanced the local and the laterally averaged film cooling performance in terms of effectiveness, and net heat flux reduction in compared to other film hole configurations. The bending effect of the new scheme throttled the secondary flow causing it to spread widely over the downstream surfaces, hence enhancing the film cooling performance at low and high blowing ratios. The hybrid scheme provided an average heat transfer ratio near unity over the downstream surfaces at low and high blowing ratios.

Experimental Investigation of Effective Thermal Conductivity for LHP Wicks

In this study, the effective thermal conductivity (ETC) of sintered loop heat pipe wicks, with pure nickel powders, pure copper powders, Ni-10wt%Cu powders and Ni-20wt%Cu powders were experimentally investigated. The ETC of sintered Ni-Cu wicks is found less than those of sintered pure nickel wick and sintered pure copper wicks. In the same porosity level, addition of copper into nickel will reduce ETC of the sintered Ni-Cu wicks. The sintered Ni-20wt%Cu wick presents the lowest ETC among the tested wick samples. Compared to experimental results, Alexander model can provide a reasonable prediction in some wick samples.

The Simulation Study of Turbulence Models for Conjugate Heat Transfer Analysis of a High Pressure Air-Cooled Gas Turbine

The different turbulence models are adopted to simulate NASA-MarkII high pressure air-cooled gas turbine. The experimental work condition is Run 5411. The paper researches that the effect of different turbulence models for the flow and heat transfer characteristics of turbine. The turbulence models include: the laminar turbulence model, high Reynolds number k-ε turbulence model, low Reynolds number turbulence model (k-ω standard format, k-ω-SST and k-ω-SST-γ-θ) and B-L algebra turbulence model which is adopted by the compiled code. The results show that the different turbulence models can give good flow characteristics results of turbine, but the heat transfer characteristics results are different. Comparing to the experimental results, k-ω-SST-θ-γ turbulence model results are more accurate and can simulate accurately the flow and heat transfer characteristics of turbine with transition flow characteristics. But k-ω-SST-γ-θ turbulence model overestimates the turbulence kinetic energy of blade local region and makes the heat transfer coefficient higher. It causes that local region temperature is higher. The results of B-L algebra turbulence model show that the results of B-L model are accurate besides it has 4% temperature error in the transition region. As to the other turbulence models, the results show that all turbulence models can simulate the temperature distribution on the blade pressure surface except the laminar turbulence model underestimates the heat transfer coefficient of turbulence flow region. On the blade suction surface with transition flow characteristics, high Reynolds number k-ε turbulence model overestimates the heat transfer coefficient and causes the blade surface temperature is high about 90K than the experimental result. Low Reynolds number k-ω standard format and k-ω-SST turbulence models also overestimate the blade surface temperature value. So it can draw a conclusion that the unreasonable choice of turbulence models can cause biggish errors for conjugate heat transfer problem of turbine. The combination of k-ω-SST-γ-θ model and B-L algebra model can get more accurate turbine thermal environment results. In addition, in order to obtain the affect of different turbulence models for gas turbine conjugate heat transfer problem. The different turbulence models are adopted to simulate the different computation mesh domains (First case and Second case). As to each cooling passages, the first case gives the wall heat transfer coefficient of each cooling passages and the second case considers the conjugate heat transfer course between the cooling passages and blade. It can draw a conclusion that the application of heat transfer coefficient on the wall of each cooling passages avoids the accumulative error. So, for the turbine vane geometry models with complex cooling passages or holes, the choice of turbulence models and the analysis of different mesh domains are important. At last, different turbulence characteristic boundary conditions of turbine inner-cooling passages are given and K-ω-SST-γ-θ turbulence model is adopted in order to obtain the effect of turbulence characteristic boundary conditions for the conjugate heat transfer computation results. The results show that the turbulence characteristic boundary conditions of turbine inner-cooling passages have a great effect on the conjugate heat transfer results of high pressure gas turbine.

Experimental Investigation of Submerged Impinging Jet Using Cu-Water Nanofluid

An experimental investigation was performed to study the heat transfer and flow features of Cu-water nanofluids (Cu particles with 26 nm diameter) in a submerged jet impingement cooling system. Three particular nozzle-to-heated surface distances (2, 4 and 6 mm) and four particle volume fractions (1.5%, 2.0%, 2.5% and 3.0%) are involved in the experiment. The experimental results reveal that the suspended nanoparticles increase the heat transfer performance of the base liquid in the jet impingement cooling system. Within the range of experimental parameters considered, it has been found that highest surface heat transfer coefficients can be achieved using a nozzle-to-surface distance of 4 mm and the nanofluid with 3.0% particle volume fraction. In addition, the experiments show that the system pressure drop of the dilute nanofluids is almost equal to that of water under the same entrance velocity.

Comparisons of Pins/Dimples/Protrusions Cooling Concepts for a Turbine Blade Tip-Wall at High Reynolds Numbers

The blade tip region encounters high thermal loads because of the hot gas leakage flows, and it must therefore be cooled to ensure a long durability and safe operation. A common way to cool a blade tip is to design serpentine passages with 180° turn under the blade tip-cap inside the turbine blade. Improved internal convective cooling is therefore required to increase blade tip lifetime. Pins, dimples and protrusions are well recognized as effective devices to augment heat transfer in various applications. In this paper, enhanced heat transfer of an internal blade tip-wall has been predicted numerically. The computational models consist of a two-pass channel with 180° turn and arrays of circular pins or hemispherical dimples or protrusions internally mounted on the tip-wall. Inlet Reynolds numbers are ranging from 100,000 to 600,000. The overall performance of the two-pass channels is evaluated. Numerical results show that the heat transfer enhancement of the pinned tip is up to a factor of 3.0 higher than that of a smooth tip while the dimpled-tip and protruded-tip provide about 2.0 times higher heat transfer. These augmentations are achieved at the cost of an increase of pressure drop by less than 10%. By comparing the present cooling concepts with pins, dimples and protrusions, it is shown that the pinned-tip exhibit best performance to improve the blade tip cooling. However, when disregarding the added active area and considering the added mechanical stress, it is suggested that the usage of dimples is more suitable to enhance blade tip cooling, especially at low Reynolds numbers.

A General Closure Model for the Time-Averaged Radiative Transfer Equation in Turbulent Flows

The time-averaged form of the radiative transfer equation (RTE) includes emission and absorption correlations that need to be modeled. There is no general formulation to estimate the absorption coefficient-radiation intensity correlation, which is generally neglected (optically thin fluctuation approximation–OTFA). Here, a model to compute this correlation, as well as the other correlations in the time-averaged form of the RTE, is described. The formulation is based on the solution of two additional differential equations. The unclosed correlations in these equations are estimated assuming that the joint probability density function (pdf) of the radiation intensity and mixture fraction is a two-dimensional clipped Gaussian distribution. The model is applied to a turbulent jet diffusion flame, and a preliminary assessment of the model is reported. It is shown that fluctuations of the radiation intensity, caused by turbulence, imply the existence of a correlation between the radiation intensity and local properties. The assumption of the shape of the joint pdf of mixture fraction and radiation intensity yields satisfactory predictions if the turbulent fluctuations are moderate, but becomes inaccurate near the flame edge where turbulent fluctuations are very large. Nevertheless, the present results suggest that the proposed model may yield better predictions than the OTFA.

Fire Suppression by Water-Mist Sprays: Experimental and Numerical Analysis

Water-mist systems have become a promising technology in the fire-fighting field over the last twenty years. The present work is aimed at employing the available knowledge on water-mist sprays in an experimental and numerical analysis of the suppression mechanism. Therefore, a water-mist system has been operated within a typical fire case. Most notably, this latter is constituted by a heptane pool fire: experiments have been carried out inside a test chamber, where a set of thermocouples has conveniently been placed to evaluate the thermal transient at different locations of interest. Some free-combustion tests have been run as a benchmark to validate combustion models. Then, a typical water-mist nozzle has been inserted and activated to realize control, suppression and potential extinction of the generated fire. The recognized FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator) and Fluent® codes have been challenged in reproducing the test case: thermal transient and suppression time have been considered as parameters for validation. Therefore, the water-mist spray has been modeled and the already mentioned results about its characterization have been implemented as initial or boundary conditions. Moreover, the fire scenario has been modeled as well. A good agreement between experimental and numerical results has been obtained, even under some approximations, with specific reference to combustion mechanisms.