Sharif Digital Repository

The physical processes responsible for bubble formation in microchannels are not well understood and lack fundamental understanding. Experimental results are not exactly in agreement with each other and there are no definite theories to explain the possible effects of different parameters. Among different parameters the microchannel hydraulic diameter can affect the bubble formation mechanism in microchannels strongly. In this paper the effect of the time dependent pressure difference between inside and outside of the bubble on bubble dynamics in microchannels have been investigated. The source of this time dependency can be the emergence of bubble embryos which produces a density... 

Density current is a dense fluid, which is continuously released from a source and spreads down a sloping surface inside a lighter, motionless fluid. A low-Reynolds number k-ε model (Launder and Sharma, 1974) has been used to simulate the behavior of 3-D density currents. Density current with a uniform velocity and concentration enters the channel via a sluice gate into a lighter ambient fluid and moves forward down-slope. The model has been verified with the experimental data sets. Although the k-ε Launder and Sharma model is applied here to a conservative density current, it seems the analysis is valid in general for turbidity current laden with fine particles. Copyright © 2006 by ASME  

In this paper, a three-dimensional numerical model is developed to analyze the influence of the Joule heating on flow characteristics of an electroosmotic flow through square cross section micro-channels. The governing system of equations consists of three sets of equations: electric potential distribution, flow-field and energy equations. The solution procedure involves three steps. The net charge distribution on the cross section of the micro-channel is computed by solving two-dimensional Poisson-Boltzmann equation using the finite element method. Then, using the computed fluid's charge distribution, the magnitude of the resulting body force due to interaction of an external electric field... 

The use of multi-element airfoils has been known as a major approach to boost up the lift of wing without dramatic increase in its drag. In fact, the configuration helps to reduce the chance of flow separation over the airfoil. However, the use of a complicated geometry such as multi-element airfoil would normally cause complexity in flow behavior. The experience has shown that the flow field complexities cannot be properly modeled using standard two-equation k-epsilon turbulence model. Therefore, it is important to improve the accuracy of general turbulence models in specific applications and complex computational domains. In this work, we extend a suitable objective function based on... 

An analytical solution is presented to study the heat transfer characteristics of the combined pressure - electroosmotically driven flow in planar microchannels. The physical model includes the Joule heating effect to predict the convective heat transfer coefficient in two dimensional microchannels. The velocity field, which is a function of external electrical field, electroosmotic mobility, fluid viscosity and the pressure gradient, is obtained by solving the hydrodynamically fully-developed laminar Navier-Stokes equations considering the electrokinetic body force for low wall zeta potentials. Then, assuming a thermally fully-developed flow, the temperature distribution and the Nusselt... 

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) introduce a promising electrochemical conversion technology to generate electricity directly from fuel oxidization. A three-dimensional (3D) numerical model is proposed to evaluate the SOFC performance by employing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach based on the finite element method. This research includes simultaneously solving momentum, energy, and mass transport equations linked with the electrochemical reactions. First, the modeling results of a SOFC system with a rectangular channel in the absence of obstacles are compared with the experimental data, showing very good agreement. The effects of different shapes and numbers of obstacles on fuel... 

In this paper a three-dimensional numerical model is developed in order to study the heat transfer enhancement in rectangular microchannels due to electrokinetic effect. The electrokinetic body force on fluid elements gives some superior convective transport properties to the flow relative to pure pressure driven flow in microchannels. Unlike the conventional parabolic velocity profile of pressure driven laminar flow, the electrokinetic body force transforms the velocity profile to a slug-like flow. Due to sharp velocity gradient near the wall, the convective heat transfer properties of the flow are improved dramatically. Net charge distribution across the channel is obtained by solving the... 

The accuracy of the large-eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent flows can be increased by using high-order numerical schemes in space and time, due to a decrease in numerical errors. This work investigates a high-order compact finite-volume scheme suitable for LES. The explicit fourth-order Runge-Kutta (RK) scheme for time marching and fourth-order compact schemes for spatial derivatives using a cell-averaged approach are implemented. Different subgrid-scale models and the effect of explicit filtering in a fully turbulent channel flow are studied. In this flow, the fourth-order compact finite-volume method in space, and fourth-order RK in time in conjunction with the dynamic Smagorinsky model... 

In this work, a multigrid acceleration technique is suitably developed for solving the two-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations using an implicit finite element volume method. In this regard, the solution domain is broken into a huge number of quadrilateral finite elements. The accurate numerical solution of a flow field can be achieved if very fine grid resolutions are utilized. Unfortunately, the standard implicit solvers need more computational time to solve larger size of algebraic set of equations which normally arise if fine grid distributions are used. Past experience has shown that the convergence of classical relaxation schemes perform an initial rapid decrease of... 

Euler conservation equations, ideal gas state equations and simplified chemical kinetics models were used to simulate two-dimensional straight and baffled shock tubes. In a straight channel, detonation waves were initiated by a strong shock wave and allowed to travel down the channel to reach a CJ wave condition. It has been shown that a two-step reaction, kinetics model with an induction time delay, resulted in a physically plausible transient solution. The one-step kinetics model solution is only valid at the limit of a steady state CJ wave condition and should not be used for transient problems. The two-step kinetics model was then used to simulate a detonation initiation in a baffled... 

Accurate implementation of river interactions with subsurface water is critical in large-scale hydrologic models with a constant horizontal grid resolution when models apply kinematic wave approximation for both hillslope and river channel flow. The size of rivers can vary greatly in the model domain, and the implemented grid resolution is too coarse to accurately account for river interactions. Consequently, the flow velocity is underestimated when the width of the rivers is much narrower than the selected grid size. This leads to inaccuracy and uncertainties in calculations of water quantities. In addition, the rate of exfiltration and infiltration between the river and the subsurface may... 

In the present investigation, we consider the heat and mass transfer characteristics of steady, incompressible and electrically conducting Casson fluid flow in a channel. The effect of chemical reactions have also been considered. The differential transform method (DTM) is applied to a system of non-linear ODEs, and the results are obtained in the form of DTM series. The principal gain of this approach is that it applies to the non-linear ODEs without requiring any discretization, linearization or perturbation. The velocity, mass and heat transfer profiles thus obtained are in good agreement with those provided by the quasi-linearization method (QLM). Graphical results for velocity,...