Search Results (5)

This study is a comprehensive review on the natural convection heat transfer in horizontal and inclined closed rectangular enclosures with internal objects (including circular, square, elliptic, rectangular, and triangular cylinders, thin plates, as well as other geometries) at various heating conditions. The review examines the influence of various pertinent governing parameters, including the Rayleigh number, Prandtl number, geometries, inclination of enclosure, concentration of nanoparticles, non-Newtonian fluids, magnetic force, porous media, etc. It also reviews various numerical simulation methods used in the previous studies. The present review shows that the presence of inner objects at different heating conditions and the inclination of enclosures significantly changes the natural convection flow and heat transfer behavior. It is found that the existing studies within the scope of the present review are essentially numerical with the assumption of laminar flow and at relatively low Rayleigh numbers, which significantly restrict the usefulness of the results for practical applications. Furthermore, the majority of the past studies focused on single and two inner objects in simple shapes (circular, square, and elliptic) and assumed identical objects and uniformly distributed placements when multiple inner objects are presented. Based on the review outcomes, some recommendations for future research on this specific topic are made. Full article

Today, the use of numerical modeling for characterizing properties of porous media and related concepts has been widely extended, especially in subsurface flow issues such as geological CO₂ storage and petroleum recovery. Therefore, in this study, the fundamental problem of laminar fluid flow through uniform or non-uniform and periodic array of cylinders was functionally investigated using the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method as a modern and applied method of modeling in order to develop the past studies and introduce a complementary numerical tool alongside laboratory methods. All modeling processes were performed in the form of dimensionless processes for generalization and applicability at different scales. The results were used to characterize properties of porous media and to investigate basic properties such as fluid velocity, permeability, streamlines, and hydraulic tortuosity. Accuracy of modeling was shown in comparison with the results obtained in the literature. In this study, the potential of the method has been investigated in order to show the ability in modeling characteristic laboratory experiments of porous media and the possibility of using it instead of them. For this purpose, three periodic models of uniform and randomly distributed non-uniform porous media with arrays of circular, square, and diamond-shaped cylinders in a porosity range of 30–95%, with different types of cylinder distribution at the pore scale, were investigated. New equations were proposed for permeability as a function of porosity. Moreover, the method of tortuosity calculation was investigated directly through the time history of properties in the SPH method, and shape factors were obtained for the studied porous media models. The results showed that the geometry of a square cylinder with distribution in a square grid led to a higher permeability than circular and diamond-shaped grids. In contrast, diamond-shaped geometry with distribution in a hexagonal grid led to higher permeability than the other two models. Furthermore, diamond-shaped geometry had higher tortuosity, and circular and square geometries had almost identical tortuosity. Increasing the size of the modeling domain and decreasing the size of cylinders (i.e., decreasing resolution) reduces effects of the shape and the geometry of cylinders and achieves the same results. Random and non-uniform distribution of cylinders within porous media reduces fluid velocity, permeability, tortuosity, and shape factor (p) compared to the uniform models. Full article

Porous materials fixed on and downstream the cylinder can reach a much better effect in suppressing wall pressure fluctuations. In the present paper, numerical comparative studies have been conducted to investigate passive control of flow past a cylinder surface, in which three schemes with different porous treatments are applied to compare their pros and cons. The results show all of the three schemes of porous materials increase the time-averaged flow drag and reduce fluctuations of lift and drag forces. It can be concluded the velocity gradient reduction inside the boundary layer and the vortex shedding delay through porous coating, as well as reverse transition from turbulent vortex shedding into laminar through porous treatment downstream the cylinder, are main flow control mechanisms of porous materials. These mechanisms all reduce fluctuations of lift and drag fluctuations, but have a distinct effect on the features of wake evolution, such as the wake width and length as well as the fluctuating components of the flow velocity. In addition, the wake evolution is highly affected by the location of porous materials. Full article

Pore scale analysis of flow through porous media is of interest because it is essential for understanding internal erosion and piping, among other applications. Past studies have mainly focused on exploring macroscopic flow to infer microscopic phenomena. An innovative method is introduced in this study which permits visualization of interstitial fluid flow through the pores of a saturated synthetic transparent granular medium at the microscale. Several representative images of Ottawa sand were obtained using dynamic image analysis (DIA), for comparison with flow through perfect cylinders. Magnified transparent soil particles made of hydrogel were cast in 3D printed molds. Custom 3D printed jigs were employed for accurate positioning of the particles to ensure that particles have the same flow area within the soil. The pore fluid was embedded with silver-coated hollow microspheres that allowed for their florescence and tracking their movement within the model when illuminated by a laser light source. Images of the flow were captured from the model using a high-speed camera. This, along with particle image velocimetry (PIV) provided for the velocity and direction analysis of fluid flow movements within the pore space of a planar 2D model. Comparison of interstitial flow through homogeneous porosity-controlled Ottawa-shaped and cylindrical particles demonstrates that the magnitude of turbulence is related to particle roundness. Full article

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models are being rapidly integrated into applications across all sciences and engineering. CFD harnesses the power of computers to solve the equations of fluid dynamics, which otherwise cannot be solved analytically except for very particular cases. Numerical solutions can be interpreted through traditional quantitative techniques as well as visually through qualitative snapshots of the flow data. As pictures are worth a thousand words, in many cases such visualizations are invaluable for understanding the fluid system. Unfortunately, vast mathematical knowledge is required to develop one’s own CFD software and commercial software options are expensive and thereby may be inaccessible to many potential practitioners. To that extent, CFD materials specifically designed for undergraduate education are limited. Here we provide an open-source repository, which contains numerous popular fluid solvers in $2D$ (projection, spectral, and Lattice Boltzmann), with full implementations in both MATLAB and Python3. All output data is saved in the $.vtk$ format, which can be visualized (and analyzed) with open-source visualization tools, such as VisIt or ParaView. Beyond the code, we also provide teaching resources, such as tutorials, flow snapshots, measurements, videos, and slides to streamline use of the software. Full article