Numerical Study of Turbulent Convective in Upward Flows of Supercritical Water in the Triangular Lattice Fuel Rod Bundle

Convection heat transfer in upward flows of supercritical water in triangular tight fuel rod bundles is numerically investigated by using the commercial CFD code, ANSYS Fluent© 14.5. The fuel rod with an inner diameter of 7.6 mm and the pitch-to-diameter ratio (P/D) of 1.14 is studied for mass flux ranging between 550 and 1050 kg/m2s and heat flux of 560 kW/m2 at pressures of 25 MPa. V2F eddy viscosity turbulence model is used and, to isolate the effect of buoyancy, constant values are used for thermo-physical properties with Boussinesq approximation for the density variation with temperature in the momentum equations. The computed Nusselt number normalized by that of the same Reynolds number with no buoyancy against the buoyancy parameter proposed by Jackson and Hall’s criterion. Mentioned results are compared with V2F turbulence model whereas strong nonmonotonic variation of the thermo-physical properties as function of temperature have been applied to the commercial CFD code using user defined function (UDF) technique. A significant decrease in Nusselt number was observed in the range of 10-6<Grq/Reb3.425Prb0.8<5×10-6 before entering a serious heat transfer deterioration regime. Based on an analysis of the shear-stress distribution in the turbulent boundary layer and the significant variation of the specific heat across the turbulent boundary layer, it is found that the same mechanism that leads to impairment of turbulence production in concentric annular pipes is present in triangular lattice fuel rod bundles at supercritical pressure.

Image Adaptive Thresholding for Multiphase Wavy Flow

Multiphase flow measurement is a very challenging issue in process industry. One of the promising approaches for multiphase flow analysis is image processing. Image segmentation is very important step in multiphase flow analysis. Determination of appropriate threshold value is very critical step for correct identification of the liquid and gas phases. There are two main thresholding techniques: Global and Adaptive. Adaptive thresholding is more suitable for multiphase flow case due to it’s adaptability to image conditions such non-uniform illumination and noise. In this work, six adaptive thresholding techniques are examined for the case of wavy flow regime. These algorithms are used to estimate the wave shape and mix region between liquid and gas. In general, the adaptive algorithms are able to compensate for non-uniform illumination and they are able to estimate wave shape and mix region correctly. The execution time for the adaptive techniques is higher than global thresholding technique, but with the availability of new powerful PCs, it will become a minor issue.

Large-Eddy Simulation of Reactive Pollutant Dispersion Over Street Canyons of Different Aspect Ratios

In urban areas, pollutants are emitted from vehicles then disperse from the ground level to the downstream urban canopy layer (UCL) under the effect of the prevailing wind. For a hypothetical urban area in the form of idealized street canyons, the building-height-to-street-width (aspect) ratio (AR) changes the ground roughness which in turn leads to different turbulent airflow features. Turbulence is considered an important factor for the removal of reactive pollutants by means of dispersion/dilution and chemical reactions. Three values of aspect ratio, covering most flow scenarios of urban street canyons, are employed in this study. The pollutant dispersion and reaction are calculated using large-eddy simulation (LES) with chemical reactions. Turbulence timescale and reaction timescale at every single point of the UCL domain are calculated to examine the pollutant removal. The characteristic mechanism of reactive pollutant dispersion over street canyons will be reported in the conference.

Numerical Simulation of Interior Flow in Evaporation Droplet

In this present study, the VOF (Volume of Fluid) approach is adopted to capture the interface, and CSF (Continuum Surface Force) model to calculate the surface tension, and the governing equations are founded in numerical simulation of evaporating droplets. In this work, a water droplet is assumed to be suspending in high temperature air, and the gravity of a droplet is ignored. During evaporating process of the droplet, the internal circulation flow will be induced due to the gradient of temperature at the droplet surface. The interface flows from high temperature area to low temperature area, which pulls the liquid to produce convective flow inside the droplet called as Marangoni flow. Marangoni flow makes the temperature distribution tend to uniformity, which enhances heat transfer but weakens Marangoni flow in turn. So, during droplet evaporation, the internal flow is not steady.

Investigation of Turbulent Mixing in a Macro-Scale Multi-Inlet Vortex Nanoprecipitation Reactor by Stereoscopic-PIV

Flash Nanoprecipitation (FNP) is a technique to produce monodisperse functional nanoparticles through rapidly mixing a saturated solution and a non-solvent. Multi-inlet vortex reactors (MIVR) have been effectively applied to FNP due to their ability to provide both rapid mixing and the flexibility of inlet flow conditions. Until recently, only micro-scale MIVRs have been demonstrated to be effective in FNP. A scaled-up MIVR could potentially generate large quantities of functional nanoparticles, giving FNP wider applicability in the industry. In the present research, turbulent mixing inside a scaled-up, macro-scale MIVR was measured by stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (SPIV). Reynolds number of this reactor is defined based on the bulk inlet velocity, ranging from 3290 to 8225. It is the first time that the three-dimensional velocity field of a MIVR was experimentally measured. The influence of Reynolds number on mean velocity becomes more linear as Reynolds number increases. An analytical vortex model was proposed to well describe the mean velocity profile. The turbulent characteristics such as turbulent kinematic energy and Reynolds stress are also presented. The wandering motion of vortex center was found to have a significant contribution to the turbulent kinetic energy of flow near the center area.

Numerical Modeling of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

This paper aims to predict the performance of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT), hence the modeling of kinetic energy extraction from wind and its conversion to mechanical energy at the rotor axis, is carried out. The H-type Darrieus turbine consists of three straight blades with shape of aerofoil attached to a rotating vertical shaft. The criterion on the selection of this kind of turbines, despite its reduced efficiency, is the easy manufacture in workshops. A parametric study has been carried out to analyze the camber effect on the non dimensional curves of power coefficient so that the self starting features as well as the range of tip speed ratio of operation could be predicted.

Numerical Simulation of Solitary Wave Using the Fully Lagrangian Method of Moving Particle Semi Implicit

A mesh-less numerical approach, called the moving particle semi implicit method (MPS), is presented to solve inviscid Navier-Stokes equations in a fully Lagrangian form using a fractional step method. This method consists of splitting each time step in two steps. The fluid is represented with particles and the motion of each particle is calculated through interactions with neighboring particles by means of a kernel function. In this paper, the MPS method is used to simulate a dynamic system consisting of a heavy box sinking vertically into a water tank, known as Scott Russell’s wave generator problem. This problem is an example of a falling rock avalanche into natural or artificial reservoirs. The box sinks into water tank and as a result the water is heaved up to form a solitary wave and a reverse plunging wave which forms a vortex. This vortex follows the solitary wave down the water tank. The good agreement between the numerical simulation and the analytical solution confirms the accuracy of the model. This proves the applicability of the present model in simulating complex free surface problems. The number of particles on free surface is presented as an indicator of stability of the model.

Analysis of New Multi Cellular Vortex Model Relevance to Atmospheric and Aerodynamic Vortices

In the present paper, we are presenting a new mathematical vortex model, which is capable of simulating single and multi-celled steady, incompressible, intense vortices. The solution is obtained using the MATLAB and Maple 14 software. The new methodology is shown to fairly correlate the actual data of naturally occurring and industrial vortices.

Mass Transfer From Single Carbon Dioxide Bubbles in Contaminated Water

Mass transfer from single carbon dioxide bubbles rising through contaminated water in a vertical pipe of 12.5 mm diameter was measured to investigate effects of surfactant. The bubble diameter was widely varied to cover various bubble shapes such as spheroidal, wobbling, cap and Taylor bubbles. The gas and liquid phases were 99.9 % purity carbon dioxide and a surfactant solution made of purified water and Triton X-100. Comparison of mass transfer rates between contaminated and clean bubbles made clear that the surfactant decreases the mass transfer rates of small bubbles. The Sherwood number of small bubbles in the extreme cases, i.e. zero and the highest surfactant concentrations, is well correlated in terms of the bubble Reynolds number, Schmidt number and the ratio, λ, of the bubble diameter to pipe diameter. The Sherwood numbers at intermediate surfactant concentration, however, are not well correlated using available correlations. The mass transfer rates of Taylor bubbles also decrease with increasing the surfactant concentration. They however increase with the diameter ratio and approaches that of clean Taylor bubbles as λ increases. The main cause of this tendency was revealed by interface tracking simulations, i.e. the surfactant adsorbs only in the bubble tail region and the nose-to-side region is almost clean at high λ.

Internal Stresses and Breakup of Porous Aggregates in Homogeneous Isotropic Turbulence

The stresses acting on aggregates smaller than the Kolmogorov length scale in homogeneous isotropic turbulence were estimated by a two-scale numerical simulation. The fluid dynamics at the scales larger than the Kolmogorov length scale was calculated by a Direct Numerical Simulation of the turbulent flow, in which the aggregates were modeled as point particles. Then, we adopted Stokesian Dynamics to evaluate the phenomena governed by the smooth velocity field of the smallest scales. At this level the disordered structure of the aggregates was modeled in detail, in order to take into account the role that the primary particles have in generating and transferring the internal stress. From this result, it was possible to evaluate the internal forces acting at intermonomer contacts and determine the occurrence of breakup as a consequence of the failure of intermonomer bonds. The method was applied to disordered aggregates with isostatic and highly hyperstatic structures, respectively.