In this work, two major accomplishments were achieved: 1) scaling laws were developed from hydrodynamic principles and numerical simulations to allow conversion of measured distributions of pressure peaks in a cavitating flow to distributions of microscopic impact loadings modeling individual bubble collapse events, and 2) a finite strain, thermo-mechanical material model for polyurea-based elastomers was developed using a logarithmic rate formulation and implemented into an explicit finite element code.
Combining the distribution of microscopic impact loads and finite element modeling, a semi-quantitative predictive framework is created to calculate the energy dissipation within the coating which can further the understanding of temperature induced coating failures.
The influence of coating thickness and elastomer rheology on the dissipation of impact energies experienced in cavitating flows has also been explored.
The logarithmic formulation has many desired features for the polyurea constitutive model, such as objectivity, integrability, and additive decomposition compatibility.
A review and discussion on the kinematics in large deformation, including a comparison between Lagrangian and Eulerian descriptions, are presented to explain the issues in building rate-dependent constitutive models in finite strains.
When comparing the logarithmic rate with other conventional rates in test examples, the logarithmic rate shows a better conservation of objectivity and integrability.
The modeling framework was validated by comparing predictions against temperatures measured within coatings subjected to a cavitating jet.
Both the experiments and models show that the temperatures generated, even under mild flow conditions, raise the coating temperature by a significant amount, suggesting that the failure of these coatings under more aggressive flows is thermally induced.
The models show that thin polyurea coatings synthesized with shorter molecular weight soft segments dissipate significantly less energy per impact and conduct heat more efficiently.
This work represents an important step toward understanding thermally induced failure in elastomers subjected to cavitating flows, which provides a foundation for design and optimization of coatings with enhanced erosion resistance.
split cylinder is studied numerically solving the Navier--Stokes
equations. The cylinder is completely filled with fluid
and is split at the midplane. Three different types of boundary
conditions were imposed, leading to a variety of instabilities and
complex flow dynamics.
The first configuration has a strong background rotation and a small
differential rotation between the two halves. The axisymmetric flow
was first studied identifying boundary layer instabilities which
produce inertial waves under some conditions. Limit cycle states and
quasiperiodic states were found, including some period doubling
bifurcations. Then, a three-dimensional study was conducted
identifying low and high azimuthal wavenumber rotating waves due to
G’ortler and Tollmien–-Schlichting type instabilities. Over most of
the parameter space considered, quasiperiodic states were found where
both types of instabilities were present.
In the second configuration, both cylinder halves are in exact
counter-rotation, producing an O(2) symmetry in the system. The basic state flow dynamic
is dominated by the shear layer created
in the midplane. By changing the speed rotation and the aspect ratio
of the cylinder, the flow loses symmetries in a variety of ways
creating static waves, rotating waves, direction reversing waves and
slow-fast pulsing waves. The bifurcations, including infinite-period
bifurcations, were characterized and the flow dynamics was elucidated.
Additionally, preliminary experimental results for this case are
presented.
In the third set up, with oscillatory boundary conditions, inertial
wave beams were forced imposing a range of frequencies. These beams
emanate from the corner of the cylinder and from the split at the
midplane, leading to destructive/constructive interactions which
produce peaks in vorticity for some specific frequencies. These
frequencies are shown to be associated with the resonant Kelvin
modes. Furthermore, a study of the influence of imposing a phase
difference between the oscillations of the two halves of the cylinder
led to the interesting result that different Kelvin
modes can be excited depending on the phase difference.
This thesis project focuses on algorithms that generate good sampling points for function approximation. In one dimension, polynomial interpolation using equispaced points is unstable, with high Oscillations near the endpoints of the interpolated interval. On the other hand, Chebyshev nodes provide both stable and highly accurate points for polynomial interpolation. In higher dimensions, optimal sampling points are unknown. This project addresses this problem by finding algorithms that are robust in various domains for polynomial interpolation and least-squares. To measure the quality of the nodes produced by said algorithms, the Lebesgue constant will be used. In the algorithms, a number of numerical techniques will be used, such as the Gram-Schmidt process and the pivoted-QR process. In addition, concepts such as node density and greedy algorithms will be explored.