Vol 25, No 3 (2016)

A computational fluid dynamic method is developed to predict the pressure losses within the newly developed foam SiC ceramic structured packing. The present work simulates the flow pattern in a macrostructure model and the typical REU mechanisms. Vertical pulse structure districts are added in one corrugated packing to aid the optimization of structured packing designs while minimizing the pressure drop. The simulations are carried out and the results are validated to obtain optimization structured packings with good pressure drop performance.

Characteristic temperatures and concentrations of a vapor–gas mixture in a wake of water droplets moving through combustion products (initial temperature 1170 K) were determined using the Ansys Fluent mathematical modeling package. We investigated two variants of motion: motion of two droplets (with sizes from 1 mm to 3 mm), consecutive and parallel, and motion of five staggered droplets. The influence of the relative position of droplets and also of distances between them (varied from 0.01 mm to 5 mm) on temperatures and concentrations of water vapor was established. The distances determine the relation between the evaporation areas and the total volume occupied by a droplet aggregate in the gas medium. The results of modeling for conditions that take into account vaporization on the droplet surface at average constant values of evaporation rate and also with consideration of the change in the latter, depending on the droplet temperature field, are compared. We determined conditions under which the modeling results are comparable for the assumption of a constant vaporization rate and with regard to the dependence of the latter on temperature. The earlier hypothesis on formation of a buffer vapor layer (“thermal protection”) around a droplet, which decreases the thermal flow from the external gas medium, was validated.

Sharp leading edges with a millimeter-scale radius are required for hypersonic vehicles from aerodynamic reasons. However, with the leading edges being so sharp, stagnation regions at wing and tail leading edges suffer a hostile thermal environment. Therefore, a high-temperature heat pipe is considered to be integrated into the structure of the leading edge to reduce the temperature of the stagnation point. In this paper, a superalloy-refractory composite-container-“wall” combined with the wick and working fluid structure is proposed, which is proved to be a feasible design of a heat pipe for the semi-passive thermal protection system (TPS). The effects of different material of the exterior surface on the temperature distributions are investigated. The effect of the half wedge angle, the design length and porosity of the wick is also investigated to find the effect of the geometry of the structure of the leading edge on the operation of the heat pipe.

Limitations of conventional heat transfer fluids in different industries because of their poor thermal conductivity made heat transfer improvement in working fluids was performing, as a new method of advanced heat transfer. Therefore, the dispersion solid particle idea in fluids, which has been started with mili- and micrometer particles, completed by using nanoparticles and today nanofluids have been found to provide a considerable heat transfer and viscosity enhancement in comparison to conventional fluids such as water, ethylene glycol, and engine oil. In this study, molecular dynamics simulation was used to predict thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids. Water was used as a base fluid. The simple point charge-extended (SPC/E) model was used for simulation of water and Ewald sum method for electrostatic interactions. Lennard–Jones potential for Van der Waals interactions, KTS potential for water and SiO₂ and Spor and Heinzinger correlation for water and Pt were used. The results were compared with experimental data. For investigation of the effect of temperature, simulation was done for three temperatures of 20, 30, and 50◦C. The results showed that the ratio of thermal conductivity of nanofluid to base fluid and viscosity will decrease as the temperature increases. The effect of the concentration of nanoparticle was studied for three different concentrations, namely, 0.45, 1.85, and 4%. The thermal conductivity of nanofluid increases with increasing the concentration. Moreover, the effect of two nanoparticle sizes (i.e., 5 and 7 nm) on the thermal conductivity of nanofluid was investigated. It was shown that an increase in the size causes a decrease in the thermal conductivity. Finally, by replacing the SiO₂nanoparticle with a Pt nanoparticle in the nanofluid, it was observed that the kind of nanoparticle had not a considerable effect on increasing the thermal conductivity of nanofluid.

Natural convection flow of roof top cross section in a green house has been numerically investigated using a thermal lattice Boltzmann method (TLBM). Two types of thermal boundary condition are considered; uniform and nonuniform bottom heating with symmetrically cold inclined walls. The results are presented as velocity and temperature profiles as well as stream function and temperature contours for different Rayleigh number, Ra, ranging from 103 to 105 with other controlled parameters. The intensity of circulation is found to be higher and symmetric for lower values of Ra and the asymmetric behavior of the flow about the geometric centre line is seen for higher values of Ra in the case of uniform bottom heating. However, for nonuniform case, multiple circulation cells are observed for different Ra maintaining the symmetrical fluid properties. In addition, the average rate of heat transfer in terms of Nusselt number indicated the lower heat transfer rates for the nonuniform case compared to the uniform heating case. Finally, the results have been compared with the previous published works and found a good agreement.