Matching Items (45)
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- All Subjects: Mechanical Engineering
- All Subjects: Physics
- Creators: Herrmann, Marcus
Description
The Vortex-lattice method has been utilized throughout history to both design and analyze the aerodynamic performance characteristics of flight vehicles. There are numerous different programs utilizing this method, each of which has its own set of assumptions and performance limitations. This thesis highlights VORLAX, one such solver, and details its historic and modernized performance characteristics through a series of code improvements and optimizations. With VORLAX, rapid synthesis and verification of aircraft performance data related to wing pressure distributions, stability and control, and Federal Regulation compliance can be quickly and accurately obtained. As such, VORLAX represents a class of efficient yet largely forgotten computational techniques that allow users to explore numerous design solutions in a fraction of the time that would be needed to use more complex, full-fledged engineering tools. In the age of modern computers, one hypothesis is that VORLAX and similar “lean” computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers have preferential performance characteristics relative to expensive, volume grid CFD suites, such as ANSYS Fluent. By utilizing these types of programs, tasks such as pre- and post-processing become trivially simple with basic scripting languages such as Visual Basic for Applications or Python. Thus, lean engineering programs and methodologies deserve their place in modern engineering, despite their wrongfully decreasing prevalence.
ContributorsSouders, Tyler Jeffery (Author) / Takahashi, Timothy T. (Thesis advisor) / Herrmann, Marcus (Thesis advisor) / Dahm, Werner J.A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Realistic engineering, physical and biological systems are very complex in nature, and their response and performance are governed by multitude of interacting processes. In computational modeling of these systems, the interactive response is most often ignored, and simplifications are made to model one or a few relevant phenomena as opposed to a complete set of interacting processes due to a complexity of integrative analysis. In this thesis, I will develop new high-order computational approaches that reduce the amount of simplifications and model the full response of a complex system by accounting for the interaction between different physical processes as required for an accurate description of the global system behavior. Specifically, I will develop multi-physics coupling techniques based on spectral-element methods for the simulations of such systems. I focus on three specific applications: fluid-structure interaction, conjugate heat transfer, and modeling of acoustic wave propagation in non-uniform media. Fluid-structure interaction illustrates a complex system between a fluid and a solid, where a movable and deformable structure is surrounded by fluid flow, and its deformation caused by fluid affects the fluid flow interactively. To simulate this system, two coupling schemes are developed: 1) iterative implicit coupling, and 2) explicit coupling based on Robin-Neumann boundary conditions. A comprehensive verification strategy of the developed methodology is presented, including a comparison with benchmark flow solutions, h-, p- and temporal refinement studies. Simulation of a turbulent flow in a channel interacting with a compliant wall is attempted as well. Another problem I consider is when a solid is stationary, but a heat transfer occurs on the fluid-solid interface. To model this problem, a conjugate heat transfer framework is introduced. Validation of the framework, as well as studies of an interior thermal environment in a building regulated by an HVAC system with an on/off control model with precooling and multi-zone precooling strategies are presented. The final part of this thesis is devoted to modeling an interaction of acoustic waves with the fluid flow. The development of a spectral-element methodology for solution of Lighthill’s equation, and its application to a problem of leak detection in water pipes is presented.
ContributorsXu, Yiqin (Author) / Peet, Yulia (Thesis advisor) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Committee member) / Herrmann, Marcus (Committee member) / Adrian, Ronald (Committee member) / Baer, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Numerical simulation of environmental flow over urban landscape for applications to renewable energy
Description
Development of renewable energy solutions has become a major interest among environmental organizations and governments around the world due to an increase in energy consumption and global warming. One fast growing renewable energy solution is the application of wind energy in cities. To qualitative and quantitative predict wind turbine performance in urban areas, CFD simulation is performed on real-life urban geometry and wind velocity profiles are evaluated. Two geometries in Arizona is selected in this thesis to demonstrate the influence of building heights; one of the simulation models, ASU campus, is relatively low rise and without significant tall buildings; the other model, the downtown phoenix model, are high-rise and with greater building height difference. The content of this thesis focuses on using RANS computational fluid dynamics approach to simulate wind acceleration phenomenon in two complex geometries, ASU campus and Phoenix downtown model. Additionally, acceleration ratio and locations are predicted, the results are then used to calculate the best location for small wind turbine installments.
ContributorsYing, Xiaoyan (Author) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Thesis advisor) / Peet, Yulia (Committee member) / Herrmann, Marcus (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
The formation and stability of a slowly evolving zonal jet in 2-D flow with beta effect is analyzed using the model developed by Manfroi and Young in which the final governing equation was derived by means of a perturbation analysis of a barotropic vorticity equation with sinusoidal meridional mean flow. However in the original study the term β0, that represents the effect of large-scale Rossby waves, was dropped and was proceeded on a path of finding solutions for a simplified 1-D flow. The idea of this study is to understand the effects of the dropped term on the overall dynamics of the zonal jet evolution. For this purpose the system that is entirely deterministic with no additional forcing is solved by means of a standard finite difference scheme. The Numerical solutions are found for varying β0 and μ values where μ represents the bottom drag. In addition to this the criteria for the formation of zonal jets developed originally for the 1-D system is verified for the 2-D system as well. The study reveals the similarity in some of the results of the 1-D and the 2-D system like the merging of jets in the absence of bottom drag, formation of steady jets in presence of a non-zero bottom drag and the adherence to the boundary criteria for the formation of zonal jets. But when it comes to the formation of steady jets, a finite β0 value is required above which the solution is similar to the 1-D system. Also the jets formed under the presence of non-zero bottom drag seem wavy in nature which is different from the steady horizontal jets produced in the 1-D system.
ContributorsRaghunathan, Girish Nigamanth (Author) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Thesis advisor) / Herrmann, Marcus (Committee member) / Chen, Kangping (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
The central purpose of this work is to investigate the large-scale, coherent structures that exist in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection (RBC) when the domain is large enough for the classical ”wind of turbulence” to break down. The study exclusively focuses on the structures that from when the RBC geometry is a cylinder. A series of visualization studies, Fourier analysis and proper orthogonal decomposition are employed to qualitatively and quantitatively inspect the large-scale structures’ length and time scales, spatial organization, and dynamic properties. The data in this study is generated by direct numerical simulation to resolve all the scales of turbulence in a 6.3 aspect-ratio cylinder at a Rayleigh number of 9.6 × 107 and Prandtl number of 6.7. Single and double point statistics are compared against experiments and several resolution criteria are examined to verify that the simulation has enough spatial and temporal resolution to adequately represent the physical system.
Large-scale structures are found to organize as roll-cells aligned along the cell’s side walls, with rays of vorticity pointing toward the core of the cell. Two different large- scale organizations are observed and these patterns are well described spatially and energetically by azimuthal Fourier modes with frequencies of 2 and 3. These Fourier modes are shown to be dominant throughout the entire domain, and are found to be the primary source for radial inhomogeneity by inspection of the energy spectra. The precision with which the azimuthal Fourier modes describe these large-scale structures shows that these structures influence a large range of length scales. Conversely, the smaller scale structures are found to be more sensitive to radial position within the Fourier modes showing a strong dependence on physical length scales.
Dynamics in the large-scale structures are observed including a transition in the global pattern followed by a net rotation about the central axis. The transition takes place over 10 eddy-turnover times and the subsequent rotation occurs at a rate of approximately 1.1 degrees per eddy-turnover. These time-scales are of the same order of magnitude as those seen in lower aspect-ratio RBC for similar events and suggests a similarity in dynamic events across different aspect-ratios.
Large-scale structures are found to organize as roll-cells aligned along the cell’s side walls, with rays of vorticity pointing toward the core of the cell. Two different large- scale organizations are observed and these patterns are well described spatially and energetically by azimuthal Fourier modes with frequencies of 2 and 3. These Fourier modes are shown to be dominant throughout the entire domain, and are found to be the primary source for radial inhomogeneity by inspection of the energy spectra. The precision with which the azimuthal Fourier modes describe these large-scale structures shows that these structures influence a large range of length scales. Conversely, the smaller scale structures are found to be more sensitive to radial position within the Fourier modes showing a strong dependence on physical length scales.
Dynamics in the large-scale structures are observed including a transition in the global pattern followed by a net rotation about the central axis. The transition takes place over 10 eddy-turnover times and the subsequent rotation occurs at a rate of approximately 1.1 degrees per eddy-turnover. These time-scales are of the same order of magnitude as those seen in lower aspect-ratio RBC for similar events and suggests a similarity in dynamic events across different aspect-ratios.
ContributorsSakievich, Philip Sakievich (Author) / Peet, Yulia (Thesis advisor) / Adrian, Ronald (Committee member) / Squires, Kyle (Committee member) / Herrmann, Marcus (Committee member) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017