Sharif Digital Repository

We use the dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) method to simulate the non-Newtonian electroosmotic flow (EOF) through nanochannels. Contrary to a large amount of past computational efforts dedicated to the study of EOF profile, this work pays attention to the EOF of non-Newtonian fluids, which has been rarely touched in past publications. Practically, there are many MEMS/NEMS devices, in which the EOF behaviour should be treated assuming both non-continuum and non-Newtonian conditions. Therefore, our concern in this work is to simulate the EOF through nanochannels considering both non-Newtonian fluid properties and non-continuum flow conditions. We have chosen DPD as our working tool because... 

A wind tunnel study was performed on the FFA-W-3-270 airfoil, which form a segment of a 1.25 MW wind turbine blade, to examine the effect of fixed roughness height and position using a zigzag tape boundary layer trip strip. Tests were conducted at a Reynolds number of 1×106 over a wide range of angles of attack. The zigzag tape, as an artificial roughness device, not only triggers a premature transition in the flow whereby laminar flow regimes change to turbulent, but also increases the momentum thickness of the turbulent boundary layer and change the airfoil camber. The 60° zigzag tape of 0.5 mm and 1 mm height was placed on the suction side of the airfoil at different chord wise locations.... 

Actuator disc models are frequently used to provide a semi-analytical approach to estimating aerodynamic loads on rotary blades. The basic idea is to distribute the aerodynamic loads on a virtual rotating disc instead of simulating the actual rotating blade. These loads are then imposed to represent the source terms of the Navier-Stokes equations, which can be solved numerically using the computational fluid dynamic methods. The thickness of the actuator disk grid is one important factor considerably affecting calculations of the wind turbine rotor. Past researches generally considered the idea of fixed grid thickness exerting along the blade in their actuator disk modeling. However, this... 

Manta ray swimming or bio-inspiration propulsion system, as a special type of marine propulsion system, is used for submersible vehicles that require high-speed maneuverability and stability, such as glider and AUV. In a manta ray swimming, the thrust force is generated by a couple of undulation and oscillation of wing, so that the direction of undulation wave and oscillation is upright and perpendicular to the direction of thrust force, respectively. It is possible to combine these two movement modes (flapping motion) on the three-dimensional model without considering the effects of wing twisting and flexibility to simplify and better understand the physical behaviors or special study of... 

It has always been a human challenge to inspire natural configurations and phenomena and benefit from their merits in improving the performances of man-made proposed aero/hydro vehicles. For example, the manta rays are known for their great swimming performances. To design and fabricate an underwater robot based on the manta ray geometry and its kinematic characteristics, it is important to initially study its hydrodynamic behavior and possibly arrive at some key design parameters, which can remarkably help to figure out an optimum geometry with high swimming performances. The main objective of this study is to focus on the merits of gliding motion inspired by the manta ray fish considering... 

In the second part of the paper, we compare the solutions produced in the framework of the conference "Mathematical and numerical aspects of low Mach number flows" organized by INRIA and MAB in Porquerolles, June 2004, to the reference solutions described in Part 1. We make some recommendations on how to produce good quality solutions, and list a number of pitfalls to be avoided. © EDP Sciences, SMAI 2005  

This research aims two major objectives: first, the influence of respiration on the particles concentration is investigated numerically in a cleanroom with a specified geometry and second, the respiration and the manner of particles diffusion are simulated. Generally, in many hospital cleanrooms such as the open-heart surgery, organ transplantation and neurosurgery rooms, reduction of the pollutant particles is important as a factor that can lead to capillary clogging during operation. In addition, the significance of reducing the concentration of large particles reveals more according to the fact that dust particles may act as a means for various pathogenic bacteria and viruses. Every... 

This research aims two major objectives: first, the influence of respiration on the particles concentration is investigated numerically in a cleanroom with a specified geometry and second, the respiration and the manner of particles diffusion are simulated. Generally, in many hospital cleanrooms such as the open-heart surgery, organ transplantation and neurosurgery rooms, reduction of the pollutant particles is important as a factor that can lead to capillary clogging during operation. In addition, the significance of reducing the concentration of large particles reveals more according to the fact that dust particles may act as a means for various pathogenic bacteria and viruses. Every... 

Despite vast efforts in developing hybrid continuum-molecular methods, there has been no specific work focused on the gas mixture flow simulations including the mixing and/or separation of species. In present study, we extend a hybrid method to analyze such phenomena suitably and study the gas mixing problems in micro/nano length scales reliably. The results of current hybrid simulations are compared against the results of full-molecular simulations to evaluate the physical accuracy of developed hybrid method. The effect of continuum breakdown criterion is investigated to find out the achieved accuracy of developed hybrid simulation method from different perspectives. The current results... 

The main objective of the current work is to utilize Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) for simulating buoyancy-driven flow considering the hybrid thermal lattice Boltzmann equation (HTLBE). After deriving the required formulations, they are validated against a wide range of Rayleigh numbers in buoyancy-driven square cavity problem. The performance of the method is investigated on parallel machines using Message Passing Interface (MPI) library and implementing domain decomposition technique to solve problems with large order of computations. The achieved results show that the code is highly efficient to solve large scale problems with excellent speedup. Copyright © 2004 by ASME  

Because of its unique properties, graphene has attracted the attentions of many academic research groups and recently, the industry. One of the promising applications of the graphene is in micro/nano-sensors, e.g. using it as a pressure sensor. To use it in mechanical-based nano-sensors, it is very important to investigate the mechanical behavior of the nano-sized graphene sheet and its sensitivity to the medium changes applied on its faces. In this work, we use the molecular dynamics MD method and simulate the behavior of graphene sheet under differential water pressure influences. In this regard, a square straight monolayer graphene sheet is placed as a separator diaphragm between two... 

This work investigates the species separation in the rarefied flow of the argon-helium mixture through convergent-divergent micronozzles. Imposing a molecular mass ratio in the order of 10, the flow of this mixture can lead to the formation of serious nonhomogeneous phenomena such as the species separation. This study is performed in the ranges of 2.0-4.0 for the geometrical expansion ratio, 200-400 K for the wall temperature, and 0.003-1.454 for the inlet Knudsen number. The effects of these parameters are examined on the separative performances of micronozzle. The direct simulation Monte Carlo method is selected as the solution method because it can provide reliable solutions in the... 

In this study, a jet propulsion JP combustor is studied numerically to investigate the combustor wall temperature influences on the soot characteristics emitted at its exhaust. There are a number of ways to control the combustor wall temperatures benefiting from different wall cooling technologies. Irrespective of using different high technology cooling systems, it is important to recognize how the wall temperature can affect the soot emission from one specific JP engine. Before examining the main combustor, it is important to assess the accuracy of the computational fluids dynamics (CFD) tool via solving a benchmark problem. In this regard, the predicted flame structure for the benchmark... 

This study describes a 1-D code, which determines the one-dimensional flow and heat transfer distributions in arbitrarily connected flow passages with multiple inlets and outlets. The procedure uses a component solver, which solves the one-dimensional compressible fluid flow and heat transfer equations inside an individual cooling passage. Also, it uses experimental correlations for the heat transfer coefficient and friction factor for each cooling passage. In addition to the component solver, there is a flow network solver subroutine, which applies the mass and energy conservation equations properly at each internal node. In order to validate this 1-D code, both the component and the flow... 

This study describes a 1-D code, which determines the one-dimensional flow and heat transfer distributions in arbitrarily connected flow passages with multiple inlets and outlets. The procedure uses a component solver, which solves the one-dimensional compressible fluid flow and heat transfer equations inside an individual cooling passage. Also, it uses experimental correlations for the heat transfer coefficient and friction factor for each cooling passage. In addition to the component solver, there is a flow network solver subroutine, which applies the mass and energy conservation equations properly at each internal node. In order to validate this 1-D code, both the component and the flow... 

To increase the flight endurance of a Micro air vehicle (MAVs), which operates at low Reynolds number flow, one way is to harvest energy during its flight. By inspiring from the nature when all the birds use their feathers to control and distribute their power along the flying time, a solution might be design of a piezoelectric plate as feathers, which scavenges energy directly from the fluid flow. Cantilevered beam with piezo-ceramic layer undergoing vortex-induced vibrations can convert the mechanical energy available from the ambient environment to a usable electrical power. Since a flow-driven piezoelectric composite beam takes a form of natural three-way coupling of the turbulent fluid... 

This study presents an improved one-dimensional approach, which is coupled with the 3D numerical flow solver, to find the temperature distribution over a typical turbine vane. The developed code solves the one-dimensional flow and heat transfer distribution in cooling flow passages inside a turbine vane. It uses our previous developed version and uses experimental correlations to predict the heat transfer coefficient and friction factor for each cooling passage. On the other hand, the hot gas flow field and conduction inside the vane material are solved using a 3D numerical solver. Our survey shows that cooling channel’s wall temperature has effect on the convective heat transfer coefficient... 

Several methods have been proposed and explored to improve the performance of the energy storage unit. This work numerically investigates the melting process of a phase change material in a rectangular enclosure in presence of an auxiliary fluid considering different volume ratios. This investigation aims to obtain the volume ratio at which the amount of energy storage in the system becomes optimized for a specified time period. Oleic acid with a melting point of 13.5 °C is selected as the phase change material and water as a fluid with a higher density than oleic acid is chosen as the auxiliary fluid. Imposing the auxiliary fluid on top of the oleic acid, a displacement occurs between the... 

In this work, a new method is presented to control the propagation of the boundary deformation within an unstructured mesh domain effectively and to avoid inefficient and unnecessary grid movement computations. In this regard, a new and simple automatic unstructured mesh ordering strategy is developed. The mesh movement algorithm automatically determines the regions, which are affected by the displacement propagation. The method needs little memory storage benefiting from an improved mesh data structure. We also present an improved acceleration strategy, which is highly consistent with the modified connectivity matrix and is able to handle a wide variety of problems with small and large... 

We study numerically the heat transfer of steady laminar flow in a square cavity filled with electrically conducting fluids, in the presence of an external uniform magnetic field. Imposing a large temperature gradient between two opposite vertical walls, there are substantial temperature and density variations in the domain. The fluid is treated as an ideal gas. Indeed, high temperature gradient thermo-buoyant cavity flows result in natural convection flow domains with high Rayleigh number. To implement the temperature variation effect, the fluid properties, including the conductivity and viscosity coefficients, are considered to vary with temperature in accordance to the Sutherland's law....