Sharif Digital Repository

Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP), as a renewable source heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) technology, has the highest energy efficiency among different heat pump types. One of the major drawbacks of GSHPs is the long-term ground temperature variations as a result of heat accumulation or depletion in the ground. This contribution puts forward a novel ground thermal recovery system for horizontal ground heat exchangers in a hot climate. The proposed recovery system consists of open-loop horizontal Ground-Air Heat Exchangers (GAHEs) that are buried between the horizontal Ground-Water Heat Exchangers (GWHEs). A fan supplies ambient air to the GAHE pipes when the soil around GWHE... 

Cell lysis is an essential primary step in cell assays. In the process of cell lysis, the cell membrane is destroyed and the substances inside the cell are extracted. By utilizing a droplet-based microfluidic platform for cell lysis, the mixer unit that is required for mixing lysis reagents with the cells can be excluded, and thus, the complexity of the fabrication process is reduced. In addition, lysing the cells within the droplets will prevent the cells from exposure to the channel walls, and as a result, cleanliness of the samples and the device is maintained. In this study, cell lysis within the droplets and the parameters affecting the efficiency of this process are investigated using... 

In this study, added resistance and motion responses of KRISO Container Ship (KCS) were evaluated experimentally and numerically in six different trim angles. A series of towing tank experiments were performed for six different trim angles at design speed in calm water and regular head waves. The ship motions and added resistance were measured for several wavelength conditions considering short and long wave ranges with wave steepness of 1/60. Next, computations of the towed model in calm water and waves were performed using Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) CFD and 3-D potential methods. Effects of trim angles on added resistance were analysed and results concerning the... 

In this study, three equations of state (EOS) in conjunction with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling were used to predict the Joule – Thomson (JT) process behavior for natural gas and various pure gases. The JT effect is encountered in several industrial applications. The experimental determination of the JT coefficient (JTC) is complicated, and there is little gas pressure-volume-temperature (PVT) data available for estimating these JTC. Thus, the development of an efficient model to predict the JT effect in industrial processes is necessary. This study was carried out to attain a clear view of the single phase-flow of hydrocarbons and nitrogen in the JT process with CFD modeling.... 

Due to the increasing need for drinking water in the world, various membrane processes have been developing significantly over the past several years. The process of membrane distillation is one of the non-isothermal processes that cause steam to pass from the membrane due to the difference in temperature and the resulting difference in vapor pressure. Due to the lack of precision in the amount of flux and thermal efficiency in various operating conditions the membrane distillation process still needs development. This article attempted to examine the effects of flowrate, temperature, and module length on the performance of the membrane distillation process using computational fluid dynamics... 

The objective of this paper is to apply computational fluid dynamic (CFD) as a complementary tool for clinical tests to not only predict the present and future status of left coronary artery stenosis but also to evaluate some clinical hypotheses. In order to assess the present status of the coronary artery stenosis severity, and thereby selecting the most appropriate type of treatment for each patient, fractional flow reserve (FFR), instantaneous wave free-ratio (iFR), and coronary flow reserve (CFR) are calculated. To examine FFR, iFR, and CFR results, the effect of geometric features of stenoses, including diameter reduction (%), lesion length (LL), and minimum lumen diameter (MLD), is... 

In this paper, a computational model is developed for the simulation of hydro-fracture growth in naturally layered impervious media using the extended finite element method (X-FEM). The equilibrium equation of the bulk is solved in conjunction with the hydro-fracture inflow and continuity equations using the staggered Newton method. The hydro-fracture inflow is modeled by using the lubrication theory, where the permeability of the fracture is incorporated by taking advantage of the cubic law. The Eigen-function expansion method is utilized in order to develop enrichment functions suited for the asymptotic stress field in the vicinity of the singular points. An energy release rate-based... 

In this research, it is investigated to numerically evaluate the performance of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). The performance is investigated through the nonuniformity gradient loading at the catalyst layer (CL) of the considered PEMFC. Computational fluid dynamics is used to simulate a 2D domain in which a steady-state laminar compressible flow in two-phase for the PEMFC has been considered. In this case, a particular nonuniform variation inside the CL along the channel is assumed. The nonuniform gradient is created using a nonisothermal domain to predict the flooding effects on the performance of the PEMFC. The computational domain is considered as the cathode of PEMFC,... 

Due to the widespread use of rarefied gas flow in micro-porous media in industrial and engineering problems, a pore-scale modeling of rarefied gas flow through two micro-porous media with fractal geometries is presented, using lattice Boltzmann method. For this purpose, square- and circular-based Sierpinski carpets with fractal geometries are selected due to their inherent behavior for real porous media. Diffusive reflection slip model is used and developed for these porous media through this study. With this respect, the planar Poiseuille flow is selected as a benchmark and validated with the literature. The effect of Knudsen number (Kn) on the permeability is investigated and compared in... 

Dynamics of a drop under the influence of gravitational force was examined using lattice Boltzmann method and color-gradient model. The term associated with the buoyancy force caused by the density difference between the two phases was modified in the lattice Boltzmann equations and verified in some cases. The motion of n-butyl acetate drops in water was predicted in various deformation regimes. The modeling results were in good agreement with the experimental results, solutions obtained by common CFD methods and semi-empirical correlations. Contrary to the common multiphase models, the behavior of moving drops in oscillating regime was predicted with good accuracy using the present model.... 

In the present paper, the formation of an air bubble in a shear-thinning non-Newtonian fluid was investigated numerically. For modeling, an algebraic volume of fluid (VOF) solver of OpenFOAM ® was improved by applying a Laplacian filter and was evaluated using the experimental results from the literature. The enhanced solver could compute the surface tension force more accurately, and it was important especially at low capillary and Bond numbers due to the dominance of surface tension force relative to the other forces. The adiabatic bubble growth was simulated in an axisymmetric domain for Bo = 0.05 , 0.1 , 0.5 and Ca = 10 - 1, 10 - 2, 10 - 3, 10 - 4, and the bubble detachment time and... 

In shell and tube heat exchangers, deep cracks can occur in tube-to-tubesheet welding and repairing such cracks is an impossible task which makes these tubes totally out of service. To preserve the thermal and mechanical integrity of heat exchanger, a series of rods is passed through these tubes and then are welded to tubesheets from both ends. Due to the increased damages in the vicinity of plugged tubes, the effect of plugging the tubes in the surrounding tubes and tubesheet failure is investigated. To this end, using CFD analysis, the temperature and pressure were calculated throughout the heat exchanger and then, the deformations and stresses of the tubes and tubesheets were computed... 

A single-objective well placement problem is one of the classical optimization problems in oilfield development and has been studied for many years, by researchers worldwide. However, the necessity to face practical applications and handle insufficient data in a single-objective optimization leads to the introduction of a multi-objective optimization framework, which consequently allows an engineer to manage more information. In this study, for the very first time, a multi-objective well placement optimization framework, based on a Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) is utilized with a similarity-based mating scheme. To represent the power of this mating procedure, it is... 

In this paper, numerical investigation of the statical and dynamical stability of aligned and misaligned viscoelastic cantilevered beam is performed with a terminal nozzle in the presence of gravity in two cases: (1) effect of fluid velocity on the flutter boundary of beam conveying fluid and (2) effect of gravity on the buckling boundary of beam conveying fluid. The beam is assumed to have a large width-to-thickness ratio, so the out-of-plane bending rigidity is far higher than the in-plane bending and torsional rigidities. Gravity vector is considered in the vertical direction. Thus, deflection of the beam because of the gravity effect couples the in-plane bending and torsional equations.... 

Hybrid FVM-LBM schemes are developed in the past few years to use capabilities of both Navier-Stokes based finite volume method (FVM) and lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to solve macro-meso multiscale problems. In this scheme, the major task is to develop some lifting relations that reconstruct distribution functions in LBM sub-domain from macroscopic variables and their derivatives. The macroscopic variables are computed using Navier-Stokes based FVM in macroscale sub-domain, while distribution functions are computed using LBM in mesoscale sub-domain. The pioneer works in this area used the single relaxation time (SRT) version of LBM. However, it is known that the numerical stability and... 

In this article, numerical simulations are performed to investigate the performance of the thermal diffusion column for the separation of n-heptane/benzene mixture. The present work tried to optimize column by analyzing significant parameters such as feed flow rate, temperature and cut. In order to obtain the hydrodynamic and temperature and mass distribution inside thermal diffusion column, computational fluid dynamic (CFD) method is applied to solve the Navier–Stocks equations. Numerical simulations are conducted to study the main parameters in both stationary and time-dependent conditions. By using the separation work unit as a function of cut, the optimal cut for maximum SWU occurs... 

We study drag reduction of a uniform flow over a flat surface due to a series of rectangular microgrooves created on the surface. The results reveal that making grooves on the surface usually leads to the generation of secondary vortices inside the grooves that, in turn, decreases the friction drag force and increases the pressure drag force. By increasing the thickness of the grooves to the thickness of the obstacle, the pressure drag increases due to the enhancement of the generated vortices and the occurrence of separation phenomenon and the friction drag reduces due to a decrease of the velocity gradient on the surface. In addition, by increasing the grooves depth ratio, the pressure... 

This research aims to investigate the thermo-hydraulic characteristics of flow in the shell side of spiral-wound heat exchangers with consistent shell geometry. To achieve this end, three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics is employed. Geometrical configuration of spiral-wound heat exchangers can be completely determined by knowing six primary parameters including start factor, tube outside diameter, number of tubes in the first layer, number of layers, longitudinal pitch, and radial pitch. Dividing the longitudinal and radial pitches by tube outside diameter, the six primary geometrical parameters reduce to five non-dimensional parameters. The effects of number of tubes in the first... 

The buoyancy-induced turbulent flows in complex geometries with internal heat source have important application in enclosure fire dynamics, for example, smoke movement in the situation of fire in tunnels. The majority of computational works studying the fire-induced hot air movement in such cases use a Cartesian coordinate system. Hence, to simulate curved geometries, the Cartesian grid should be refined so that it comparatively matches the geometry. In the present work, a three-dimensional numerical method using nonorthogonal curvilinear coordinate system was developed. Numerical simulations were performed to study the flow structures and the heat transfer characteristics of fire-induced... 

A complete cycle of droplet nucleation, growth, coalescence and jumping on different textured hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces is studied for the first time, using a 2-D double distribution function thermal lattice Boltzmann method. First, droplet nucleation mechanism on smooth and rough surfaces is studied in detail. The results reveal the presence of cooled vapor layer instability in the condensation on completely smooth surfaces. However, on the rough surfaces and near the roughness a completely different mechanism is observed and the nucleation occurs on the roughness wedges. Also, the condensation on different textured surfaces with nominal contact angles θa=90°,120°,155° is...