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The existing grape drying technology and equipment often have problems such as poor hygiene conditions, high drying costs, and large drug residues. Therefore, the market urgently needs grape drying equipment with low energy consumption, high efficiency, and a green-clean processing process. To solve the above problems, a piece of integrated drying equipment combining the two technologies of air impingement blanching and air impingement drying for multi-layer grape material drying is designed. The dried product quality is directly affected by the airflow field distribution. Therefore, obtaining good airflow distribution and airflow velocity uniformity in the drying chamber via parametric studies is essential to ensure uniform drying of products. Since parametric and optimization investigations by physical experiments are usually expensive and time-consuming, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) being a flexible and less expensive tool can be employed to perform such studies. In the current work, the airflow velocity distribution and uniformity of the drying material room are analyzed by Ansys Fluent software. The airflow velocity non-uniformity coefficient is used to evaluate airflow uniformity. Results show that the original design has poor uniformity and needs to be optimized. The influence of air inlet chamber deflection device and material truck airflow baffles on the flow field of the material drying room is investigated to improve the uniformity of airflow distribution. Considering drying efficiency and uniformity, drying material room structure with the addition of deflection device design with the structural parameters of L = 50 mm and θ = 76°, airflow baffle design with the structural parameters of h = 0 mm, θ2 = 20° is chosen as the final optimized design. After optimization, the velocity of airflow between material layers has improved overall, and the maximum difference of average airflow velocity between material layers has been reduced from 0.73 m/s to 0.69 m/s, improving the drying uniformity of dried materials. In comparison to other drying equipment, the current integrated drying equipment combing air impingement blanching and drying has the advantages of being efficient and energy-saving, suitable for large-scale drying of grapes with better drying quality. The current results could guide the drying equipment design for grapes and develop the grape drying industry with high-dried quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Airflow velocity uniformity in material drying room used in steam blanching and hot-air vacuum drying equipment is crucial for obtaining a good drying quality of fruits and vegetables. To analyze the airflow velocity uniformity and give the optimization design for improving the airflow uniformity, CFD method is used for the flow field analysis of material drying room and the velocity non-uniformity coefficient is used as the evaluation indicator for the velocity uniformity. Results show that the airflow velocity distribution in the material drying room at the original inlet airflow distribution chamber is relatively uneven and the airflow velocity non-uniformity coefficient in drying area is 34 %. For reducing the airflow velocity non-uniformity, the airflow velocity distribution of three structural modification directions with 12 designs in total are analyzed and compared. The minimum airflow velocity non-uniformity coefficient for adding a spoiler model, reducing the closed end width and adding nozzle baffles are 17.1 %, 30.2 %, 10.4 %, respectively. Through comparison, adding the nozzle baffle with a width of 11 mm at the rear end of each nozzle outlet is considered as the optimal designs to conduct the experimental validation. Experimental validation results shows the the relative error between the simulated value and the measured value is within 10 %, proving that the CFD prediction results is reliable and the research results can give a theoretical reference for the designers to evaluate and optimize the structure of inlet airflow distribution chamber for improving the airflow uniformity in drying area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at improving the cooling of motor annular water jacket, the effects of different water jacket designs and pump rotation speed and epoxy resin filling on the flow field characteristics and motor temperature distribution were studied. Results show that uneven flow distribution leads to high temperature of motor coil and large temperature gradient. The optimized water jacket has better flow, uniform flow distribution of long and short paths, higher utilization rate of coolant, and the coil temperature is 2 °C lower than that of original model. On the basis of optimized water jacket, when epoxy resin filling methodology and pump rotation speed increased to 5000 r/min are applied, the coil temperature can be reduced by 16 °C compared with the original model. From the cooling performance optimization results in current case, the improvement order from the smallest to the biggest is the optimization of motor water jacket flow field, optimization of motor water jacket system flow rate, and the epoxy resin filling. To meet the cooling demands of motor, the comprehensive effects from the aspects of reducing coolant system resistance, increasing pump speed, epoxy resin filling and other effective technologies are ought to be considered for all case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comprehensive performance evaluation procedure and overall performance evaluation indices for the four cylinder engine cooling systems are proposed in this work and the four cylinder engine cooling system with two different flow patterns are investigated. Coolant velocity distributions of nose bridge area sections of cylinder head water jacket and plane section of cylinder block water jacket in series flow pattern cooling system meet the coolant flow velocity requirements of 1.5 m/s in high-temperature area. Coolant velocity distributions of water jacket in parallel flow pattern cooling system is relatively lower and not meet the velocity requirements of 1.5 m/s. Through the improvement of pump performance, the system coolant flowrate in parallel flow pattern cooling system can be increased to 90 L/min. After velocity uniformity improvement of water jacket, the coolant velocity distributions in parallel flow cooling system become more uniform. Coolant velocity and heat transfer coefficient of high temperature area both meet the design requirements of coolant velocity 1.5 m/s and heat transfer coefficients of 5000 W/(m2·K). The cooling performance for the engine with parallel flow pattern cooling system is significantly improved and meets the cooling design requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]