Sharif Digital Repository

This article deals with the design and optimization of a cascade thermoacoustic Stirling engine. Different configurations for cascade thermoacoustic Stirling heat engine are investigated. A simplified model is proposed to enable initial design guidelines. The most important characteristics of the cascade system are examined. The results indicate that the thermoacoustic engines in cascade configuration may achieve very low onset temperatures. A suitable configuration is selected and the locations and dimensions of different thermoacoustic units are optimized to achieve low onset temperatures as well as high values for the acoustic power output and efficiency. The results support the... 

In the present study a comprehensive thermoeconomic modelling of a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) for a typical 4MW class gas turbine is performed. Usually, the thermoeconomic analyses involve a thermodynamic model of the HRSG and an economic model dedicated to assess the cost. In this study, different configurations of single and dual pressure level HRSGs are optimized and afterward compared to find the economical design. For these configurations thermodynamic model calculates the performance and the energy balance of systems at the optimal operating conditions which are derived from optimization model, and economic model estimates total cost per unit of produced energy. Finally,... 

A series of wind tunnel tests are performed to examine the flow field over a swept wing under various conditions. The wing has a laminar flow airfoil section, similar to those of the NACA 6-series. Static pressure distributions over the upper surface of the wing, in both chordwise and spanwise directions, are measured at different angles of attack. The data is employed to predict the transition point at each chordwise section. The skewness parameter of the pressure data shows that this factor drops to zero in the transition region. A comparison of the calculated transition point on the wing surface with that obtained from the 2D computational method shows reasonable agreement over a portion... 

In this article, an attempt is made to utilize the exhaust gases of a small gas turbine to augment power output through the employment of a thermoacoustic system. A simple gas turbine cycle is selected as the base cycle and it is assumed that the thermoacoustic system is powered only by the waste heat of the base gas turbine. A comprehensive cycle analysis of the integrated gas turbine thermoacoustic engine (IGTTE) is carried out from an energy and exergy point of view. Exergy efficiency and internal exergy efficiency are calculated for the different components of the base gas turbine engine as well as the IGTTE. Value and exergy flow diagrams are used to investigate the possible... 

An integrated fuzzy logic-neural network methodology is presented as a mean to improve the reconstruction of the performance map of axial compressors and fans. The learning capability of artificial neural network technique is integrated to the knowledge aspect of fuzzy inference system to offer enhanced prediction capabilities compared to using a single methodology independently. The proposed technique incorporates information of experimental data on surge, operating, and choke lines at any arbitrary but fixed rotational speed. A comparison of the predicted results with experimental data reveals a very good agreement. The proposed technique has the capability to model the nonlinear surge... 

In this article, a feed-forward neural network is explored to reconstruct the performance map of an axial compressor through the utilization of a limited number of experimental data. The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm with Bayesian regularization method is used to adjust the weights and biases of the network. The proposed technique is utilized to estimate the mass flowrate, the pressure ratio, the shaft speed, and the efficiency in regions where no experimental data are available. The surge line is predicted and the line of maximum efficiencies is determined. The results are compared with experimental data  

We used a reflected shock tube to investigate the acoustic signature of a hot jet at the far-field. Experiments were performed at Mach = 1.4 and a total temperature of Tt = 950 Kelvin. Far-field acoustic signatures of the hot jet at six polar angles θ = 15˚ to θ = 90˚ from the jet axis) were measured and imaged by the means of continuous wavelet transform in scalograms. The results were compared with experiments from a steady test facility at similar test conditions. Further, the primary characteristics of noise events in jet far-field were compared with analytical models considering wavepacket as the main source of jet noise. The results indicate that higher frequency events at θ = 90˚... 

Subsonic wind tunnel experiments were conducted to study the effect of tripped boundary layer on the pressure distribution in the contraction region of the tunnel. Measurements were performed by installing trip strip at two different positions in the concave portion of the contraction. The results show that installation of the trip strips, have significant effects on both turbulence and pressure distribution. The reduction in the free stream turbulence and reduction of the wall static pressure distribution deferred signified with the location of the trip strip  

A rotated general regression neural network is presented as an enhancement to the general regression neural network. A variable kernel estimate for multivariate densities is considered. A coordinate transformation is adopted which circumvent the difficulty of predicting multimodal distribution with large variance differences between modes which is associated with the general regression neural network. The proposed technique trains the network in a way that the variance differences between modes is kept small and in the same order. Further, the technique reduces the number of indispensable training parameters to two parameters and lowers the load of the computation as well as the time for... 

A 2D numerical investigation is performed to better understand the transient thermo-fluid processes in a vortex tube for a cold mass fraction equal to0.44. The results along the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube reveal a close agreement with past numerical and experimental data. The distribution of axial, radial, and tangential velocities as well as the stagnation pressure and temperature are examined at different positions for different time steps. The results indicate that the tangential velocity is the most significant velocity component and dominates the heat transfer and energy conversion processes. In addition, it is evident that the core of the cold end experiences the highest pressure... 

An extensive experimental study is conducted to examine the effects of winglet-shapes and orientations on the static surface pressure, wake, and the flowfield of a swept wing at angles of attack between -10 to 15 degrees. Four types of winglets, spiroid (forward and aft), blended winglets, and winggrid are used in this investigation. Wing static surface pressure measurements are obtained for both chordwise and spanwise, as well as the wake profiles at various angles of attack using the aforementioned winglets. Further, the effect of addition of turbulator strip on the wing upper surface is examined. The results are compared with the wing without winglet. The results show that addition of... 

In this paper, an unsteady, two-dimensional solver is developed, based on Van Leer's flux splitting algorithm, in conjunction with the "Monotonic Upstream Scheme for Conservation Laws (MUSCL)" limiters for improving the order of accuracy. For a minimum usage of computer memory and faster convergence, the two-layer Baldwin-Lomax turbulence model is implemented for a viscous solution. Three test cases are prepared to validate the solver. The computed results are compared with experimental data and the good agreement of the compared results validates the solver. Finally, the solver is used for the flow through a multi-blade stage of an axial compressor in its design condition. The solutions of... 

In this paper, the effects of turbulence on sound generation and velocity fluctuations due to pressure waves in a large subsonic wind tunnel are studied. A trip strip located at different positions in the contraction part or at one position in the diffuser of a large wind tunnel is used to investigate the aforementioned phenomenon, and the results indicate that the trip strip has significant effects on sound reduction. The lowest turbulence intensity and sound are obtained from a trip strip with a diameter of 0.91mm located either at X/L = 0.79 or at X/L = 0.115 in the wide portion of the contraction. Furthermore, the effect of monopole, dipole and quad- rupole sources of aerodynamic noise... 

Subsonic wind tunnel experiments were conducted to study the turbulence level in the test section. Measurements were performed by introducing trip strip and/or damping screens on the flow field. The results indicated that the introduction of trip strips not only reduced the turbulence intensity compared to cases without it, but also flattened the variations. Further, the experiments which investigated the impact of the damping screens indicated a similar reduction in turbulence intensity; the pattern, however, remained the same. Furthermore, the results for cases wherein both trip strips as well as damping screens were placed on the contraction and in the settling chamber, respectively,... 

A new genetic algorithm (GA) based method for direct calibration of 2-D hot-wire probe and other instruments that can measure 2-D flow properties is introduced. This new method is an alternative for the previous QR method that is commonly used for calibration of the X-probe hot wires. The proposed GA method resulted in a much smaller error in the velocity estimation while preserving the number of sentences in its calibration equation format. In addition, it preserves the magnitude of its error even when the number of sentences in the calibration equation is decreased while the error in the QR method increases substantially for the same situation. Furthermore, the results were much closer to... 

In this research, the employment of an innovative but simple and cost effective method for turbulent reduction in a low speed wind tunnel is investigated and the effect of this turbulence reduction on the Power Spectrum and FFT-Based signals that obtained from Hot-wire Anemometry is studied. These terms represents the amount of power contained in the signals. Several situations are studied in this paper. One of these situations is when there are four screens in the settling chamber of the wind tunnel and after that by adding the trip strip in the contraction region of the wind tunnel the tests were repeated. In the next stage, three screens were removed from the settling chamber of the wind... 

The focus of the current research is to develop an intelligent design process that uses existing data as a tool for the designers, one that fully utilizes the ability of the computer to interpolate and extrapolate the scattered data. Surface pressure measurements were conducted for a pitch oscillation wing in a subsonic closed circuit wind tunnel. Experimental results have been used to train a multilayer perceptron network. This work indicates that neural networks can reliably predict aerodynamic coefficients and forecast the effects of reduced frequencies on the wind turbine blade performance. ©2007 IEEE  

Surface pressure measurements were conducted for a pitch oscillation wing in a subsonic closed circuit wind tunnel. Experimental results have been used to train a multilayer perceptron network to foresee the effect of modification of oscillation amplitude and reduced frequency. Consistent results are obtained both for the training data as well as generalization to other amplitudes and reduced frequencies. This work indicates that artificial neural networks can reliably predict aerodynamic coefficients and forecast the effects of oscillation amplitude as well as reduced frequency on the wind turbine blade performance. Moreover, this study introduces a new tool for the designers to have enough... 

This paper presents a state of the art design for the blade tip injection. The design includes the means, to inject high-pressure gas jet directly into a circumferential casing groove formed in the shroud adjacent to the blade tip. The casing groove is positioned over the blade tip and exceeds 30% of the blade axial chord beyond the impeller to both upstream and downstream directions. In order to validate the multi block model used in the tip gap region, main flow characteristics are verified with the experimental data for smooth casing with a design clearance of 0.5% span. Three arbitrary mass flow rates (1.75%, 2.45%, and 4.35% of choked mass flow) have been studied. The results indicate... 

Experiments are performed to investigate the atomization characteristics of mixed-interaction regions of sprays of two swirl injectors installed side by side. Both droplet size and velocity distributions on a plane perpendicular to the axes of the injectors are measured using a PDA system. As a result of the interaction phenomenon, a region of secondary atomization is identified that differs significantly from the hollow region spray of a single swirl injector. A neural network algorithm is used to reconstruct the entire spray field for both droplet size and velocity distribution in extrapolation regimes for injector spacing as well as three dimen sional spatial coordinates. Excellent...