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Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics to Practical Engineering and Environmental Flows

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Mechanical Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 November 2021) | Viewed by 16074

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Hull, Kingston upon Hull, UK
Interests: Professor Rubini has a background in the development and application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to practical engineering problems across a broad range of topics. These originally concentrated upon gas turbine combustion but now encompass more general applications including process systems, fire safety and heat transfer as well as low speed aerodynamics and thermofluids and acoustics. One focus of this activity was through an early development of a CFD code specifically for fire simulation although more recently, commercial CFD codes have become more widely used, originally exclusively for teaching, but particularly now where complex geometries are involved.

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The idea of employing numerical methods to predict fluid flow was proposed by Lewis Fry Richardson in the early 20th Century when he published a book entitled “Weather Prediction by Numerical Process” (Cambridge University Press, 1922). Later developments in the field were very slow until the advent of the digital computer, when academic journal articles were soon published under the broad topic of ‘numerical methods for fluid flow’.

The term Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was commonly adopted in the early 1970’s, with the acronym used to refer to the numerical solution of the governing equations which describe fluid flow - the set of the Navier-Stokes equations, continuity and any additional conservation equations. CFD is now very well established as a simulation tool, both within academia and science and industry, across a wide range of disciplines covering the full spectrum of flow speed and dimensional scales. The continued increase in accessible compute resource and consequent developments in scale resolved simulations of turbulent flow, has further narrowed the gap between simulation and physical reality as expressed by the Navier-Stokes equations.

This special issue of Applied Sciences will highlight the current state of the art in the application of computational fluid dynamics to practical engineering and environmental problems, whilst recognizing the essential role of verification and validation, to ensure that errors present in results are suitably quantified.

Prof. Philip A. Rubini
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • CFD
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Numerical Simulation
  • Navier-Stokes Equations

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

9 pages, 23493 KiB  
Article
Numerical Investigation of Air Entrapment Dynamics for High-Speed Thermal Spraying
by Han Ge, Kaichuang Wang, Jiawang Chen, Ronghua Zhu, Marisa Lazarus and Dayun Yan
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(23), 12039; https://doi.org/10.3390/app122312039 - 24 Nov 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1466
Abstract
For thermal spraying, bubble entrapments are highly undesired, as this would lead to pores in the final coating and lower its adhesion quality. This understanding warrants an investigation of the process behind their formation. Nevertheless, the air entrapment process is difficult to study [...] Read more.
For thermal spraying, bubble entrapments are highly undesired, as this would lead to pores in the final coating and lower its adhesion quality. This understanding warrants an investigation of the process behind their formation. Nevertheless, the air entrapment process is difficult to study via experimental methods since molten droplets are always opaque and hard to visualize. Most numerical models are focused on air entrapment at the moment of impact, which could only explain the pores observed around the center of the splat. Here, in this paper, the air entrapment of a micron-sized molten nickel droplet impacting on a stainless-steel substrate is numerically studied. The results show that, besides the air entrapped during the high-speed impacting (impacting air bubbles/IM bubbles), bubbles may also be entrapped due to the fallback of the pointed-out finger on the edge during the spreading process (spreading air bubbles/SP bubbles). The number and size of the entrapped SP bubbles are related to the solidification rate and spreading rate. Therefore, both low (50 m/s) and high (200 m/s) impacting speeds could achieve an entrapped bubble ratio that is about 10% lower than that of a medium one (100 m/s). However, the formed coating is thick for low impacting speeds, and the low entrapped bubble ratio is obtained due to the cut-off of the peripherical fingers, which is actually unwanted. Full article
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21 pages, 2907 KiB  
Article
Sharp Interface Capturing in Compressible Multi-Material Flows with a Diffuse Interface Method
by Shambhavi Nandan, Christophe Fochesato, Mathieu Peybernes, Renaud Motte and Florian De Vuyst
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(24), 12107; https://doi.org/10.3390/app112412107 - 19 Dec 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3117
Abstract
Compressible multi-materialflows are encountered in a wide range of natural phenomena and industrial applications, such as supernova explosions in space, high speed flows in jet and rocket propulsion, underwater explosions, and vapor explosions in post accidental situations in nuclear reactors. In the numerical [...] Read more.
Compressible multi-materialflows are encountered in a wide range of natural phenomena and industrial applications, such as supernova explosions in space, high speed flows in jet and rocket propulsion, underwater explosions, and vapor explosions in post accidental situations in nuclear reactors. In the numerical simulations of these flows, interfaces play a crucial role. A poor numerical resolution of the interfaces could make it difficult to account for the physics, such as material separation, location of the shocks and contact discontinuities, and transfer of the mass, momentum and heat between different materials/phases. Owing to such importance, sharp interface capturing remains an active area of research in the field of computational physics. To address this problem in this paper we focus on the Interface Capturing (IC) strategy, and thus we make use of a newly developed Diffuse Interface Method (DIM) called Multidimensional Limiting Process-Upper Bound (MLP-UB). Our analysis shows that this method is easy to implement, can deal with any number of material interfaces, and produces sharp, shape-preserving interfaces, along with their accurate interaction with the shocks. Numerical experiments show good results even with the use of coarse meshes. Full article
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21 pages, 1912 KiB  
Article
CFD Based Non-Dimensional Characterization of Energy Dissipation Due to Verticle Slosh
by Michael Dennis Wright, Francesco Gambioli and Arnaud George Malan
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(21), 10401; https://doi.org/10.3390/app112110401 - 5 Nov 2021
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 1901
Abstract
We present the CFD based non-dimensional characterization of violent slosh induced energy dissipation due a tank under vertical excitation. Experimentally validated CFD is used for this purpose as an ideally suited and versatile tool. It is thus first demonstrated that a weakly compressible [...] Read more.
We present the CFD based non-dimensional characterization of violent slosh induced energy dissipation due a tank under vertical excitation. Experimentally validated CFD is used for this purpose as an ideally suited and versatile tool. It is thus first demonstrated that a weakly compressible VoF based CFD scheme is capable of computing violent slosh induced energy dissipation with high accuracy. The resulting CFD based energy analysis further informs that the main source of energy dissipation during violent slosh is due liquid impact. Next, a functional relationship characterising slosh induced energy dissipation is formulated in terms of fluid physics based non-dimensional numbers. These comprised contact angle and liquid–gas density ratio as well as Reynolds, Weber and Froude numbers. The Froude number is found the most significant in characterising verticle violent slosh induced energy dissipation (in the absence of significant phase change). The validated CFD is consequently employed to develop scaling laws (curve fits) which quantify energy dissipation as a function of the most important fluid physics non-dimensional numbers. These newly developed scaling laws show for the first time that slosh induced energy dissipation may be expressed as a quadratic function of Froude number and as a linear function of liquid–gas density ratio. Based on the aforementioned it is postulated that violent slosh induced energy dissipation may be expressed as a linear function of tank kinetic energy. The article is concluded by demonstrating the practical use of the novel CFD derived non-dimensional scaling laws to infer slosh induced energy dissipation for ideal experiments (with exact fluid physics similarity to the full scale Aircraft) from (non-ideal) slosh experiments. Full article
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21 pages, 3683 KiB  
Article
A Porous Media Model for the Numerical Simulation of Acoustic Attenuation by Perforated Liners in the Presence of Grazing Flows
by Jianguo Wang, Philip Rubini and Qin Qin
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(10), 4677; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11104677 - 20 May 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2745
Abstract
In this paper, a novel model is proposed for the numerical simulation of noise-attenuating perforated liners. Effusion cooling liners offer the potential of being able to attenuate combustion instabilities in gas turbine engines. However, the acoustic attenuation of a perforated liner is a [...] Read more.
In this paper, a novel model is proposed for the numerical simulation of noise-attenuating perforated liners. Effusion cooling liners offer the potential of being able to attenuate combustion instabilities in gas turbine engines. However, the acoustic attenuation of a perforated liner is a combination of a number of interacting factors, resulting in the traditional approach of designing perforated combustor liners relying heavily on combustor rig tests. On the other hand, direct computation of thousands of small-scale holes is too expensive to be employed as an engineering design tool. In recognition of this, a novel physical velocity porous media (PVPM) model was recently proposed by the authors as a computationally less demanding approach to represent the acoustic attenuation of perforated liners. The model was previously validated for the normal incidence of a sound wave by comparison with experimental data from impedance tubes. In this paper, the model is further developed for configurations where the noise signal propagates in parallel with the perforated liners, both in the presence and absence of a mean flow. The model is significantly improved and successfully validated within coexisting grazing and bias flow scenarios, with reference to a series of well-recognized experimental data. Full article
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19 pages, 12251 KiB  
Article
Coupling High-Resolution Numerical Weather Prediction and Computational Fluid Dynamics: Auckland Harbour Case Study
by Amir Ali Safaei Pirooz, Stuart Moore, Richard Turner and Richard G. J. Flay
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(9), 3982; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11093982 - 28 Apr 2021
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3124
Abstract
In this study, the resilience of large cities and their built infrastructure in New Zealand to extreme winds, is investigated by coupling the outputs of a very high-resolution, 333-m resolution, numerical weather prediction (NWP) model with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Following an [...] Read more.
In this study, the resilience of large cities and their built infrastructure in New Zealand to extreme winds, is investigated by coupling the outputs of a very high-resolution, 333-m resolution, numerical weather prediction (NWP) model with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Following an extreme wind event on 18 September 2020 in Auckland, in which two trucks travelling over the Auckland Harbour bridge tipped over and damaged the bridge structure, a CFD simulation of airflow over the bridge using the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) method and NWP wind speed forecasts as the inlet profile is conducted. The 333 m NWP forecasts were validated against four nearby observation sites, showing generally high correlations of greater than 0.8 and low mean bias (±3 m s−1) and RMSE (<3 m s−1) values. The CFD-based estimates of the mean wind speed-up over the bridge showed that the mean wind speed could increase by a factor of 1.15–1.20 in the vicinity of the road where the toppled vehicles were travelling. Additionally, NWP forecasts and CFD estimates of wind gusts at the maximum bridge height, within the area not affected by the bridge structure, agreed well with a value of about 25 m s−1. An anemometer mounted at the top of the bridge arch measured a higher gust wind speed of about 35 m s−1 that could have been influenced by the gust speed-up resulting from the flow separation from the bridge arch, which is demonstrated in the CFD results. The results demonstrate the importance of understanding localised wind speed-up effects and distinguishing them from the approaching undisturbed airflow. Full article
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33 pages, 7136 KiB  
Article
An All-Mach Number HLLC-Based Scheme for Multi-Phase Flow with Surface Tension
by Muhammad Y. Oomar, Arnaud G. Malan, Roy A. D. Horwitz, Bevan W. S. Jones and Genevieve S. Langdon
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(8), 3413; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11083413 - 10 Apr 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2828
Abstract
This paper presents an all-Mach method for two-phase inviscid flow in the presence of surface tension. A modified version of the Hartens–Lax–van Leer Contact (HLLC) solver is developed and combined for the first time with a widely used volume-of-fluid (VoF) method: the compressive [...] Read more.
This paper presents an all-Mach method for two-phase inviscid flow in the presence of surface tension. A modified version of the Hartens–Lax–van Leer Contact (HLLC) solver is developed and combined for the first time with a widely used volume-of-fluid (VoF) method: the compressive interface capturing scheme for arbitrary meshes (CICSAM). This novel combination yields a scheme with both HLLC shock capturing as well as accurate liquid–gas interface tracking characteristics. It is achieved by reconstructing non-conservative (primitive) variables in a consistent manner to yield both robustness and accuracy. Liquid–gas interface curvature is computed via height functions and the convolution method. We emphasize the use of VoF in the interest of interface accuracy when modelling surface tension effects. The method is validated using a range of test-cases available in the literature. The results show flow features that are in sensible agreement with previous experimental and numerical work. In particular, the use of the HLLC-VoF combination leads to a sharp volume fraction and energy field with improved accuracy. Full article
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