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Geometrical structures and operating performance of volutes used in centrifugal pumps are assessed in cross sections. By a volute, we mean the wetted part surrounding the impeller in a pump that converts the kinetic energy of water into potential energy. It is important to develop improved design principles and approaches for volutes to reduce hydraulic loss and increase the efficiency of pumps. However, when designing volutes, pump designers often neglect a key factor related to pump efficiency, namely, the energy loss due to the friction at the volute sidewall is directly proportional to the wetted perimeter of the cross section. In this paper, we show that the length of the wetted perimeter of the cross section is mathematically proportional to the friction loss in the volute. In addition, we present the design principles and calculation process to minimize the wetted perimeters of two kinds of cross section based on the velocity coefficient method using the same statistical data. The structures and shapes of the new cross sections are completely different from those of traditional volutes. Moreover, two different volutes with different cross sections are numerically investigated using a verified computational fluid dynamics technique. Both the head and the efficiency of the pump with the new volute are higher than those of a conventional pump under all working conditions. This paper provides a new design approach for the energy-saving volutes of centrifugal pumps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precise prediction of ventilation flow is essential to create a comfortable, economical, and healthy indoor environment. In the past three decades, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method has been used more often, and it is now one of the primary methods for studying building ventilation. The most common CFD method is RANS simulation because of the low cost of computational resources and good accuracy. This paper presents a numerical investigation of a transitional ventilation flow with the Coanda effect, which makes the initial free jet transform into a wall jet. Six low-Reynolds number k-ε models proposed by Abid (AB), Lam and Bremhorst (LB), Launder and Sharma (LS), Yang and Shih (YS), Abe Kondoh and Nagano (AKN), and Chang, Hsieh and Chen (CHC) are applied. The performance of the six models is evaluated by comparing the computational results with the PIV measurements of Van Hooff et al. The predictions revealed that the LS model has a good approximation of velocity profiles because of its two extra terms in k and ε equations, and the AB model is in good agreement with experimental results for predicting the Coanda effect. The LB model provides the worst agreement with experimental data on account of the wrong prediction of turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cycle-to-cycle variations (CCV) in spark-ignited (SI) engines impose performance limitations and in the extreme limit can lead to very strong, potentially damaging cycles. Thus, CCV force sub-optimal engine operating conditions. A deeper understanding of CCV is key to enabling control strategies, improving engine design and reducing the negative impact of CCV on engine operation. This paper presents a new simulation strategy which allows investigation of the impact of individual physical quantities (e.g., flow field or turbulence quantities) on CCV separately. As a first step, multi-cycle unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (uRANS) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of a spark-ignited natural gas engine are performed. For each cycle, simulation results just prior to each spark timing are taken. Next, simulation results from different cycles are combined: one quantity, e.g., the flow field, is extracted from a snapshot of one given cycle, and all other quantities are taken from a snapshot from a different cycle. Such a combination yields a new snapshot. With the combined snapshot, the simulation is continued until the end of combustion. The results obtained with combined snapshots show that the velocity field seems to have the highest impact on CCV. Turbulence intensity, quantified by the turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, has a similar value for all snapshots. Thus, their impact on CCV is small compared to the flow field. This novel methodology is very flexible and allows investigation of the sources of CCV which have been difficult to investigate in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To determine the kinetic energy consumption of various spray-sprinkler structural parameters, the hydraulic performance, including the discharge and initial trajectory velocity, was investigated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses and the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. A comparison of the experimental and simulation results showed that a high accuracy was obtained using CFD technology. On this basis, a series of simulations was performed to evaluate the effects of groove length, groove number, and cone angle on jet velocities, and the kinetic energy dissipation was calculated. The results showed that the spray-plate structure had a significant influence on the water fraction patterns, leading to relatively large differences in the initial velocity; the average velocity decreased as the cone angle, groove number, or groove length of the spray plate increased. The wall shear stress results showed that a large amount of kinetic energy was dissipated in the groove, indicating that decreasing the groove number or groove length reduced energy dissipation. In addition, the wall shear stress in the cone area increased as the cone angle increased, resulting in an increase in energy dissipation. The sensitivity analysis indicated that the groove length is the most significant parameter influencing energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the ability of high-order flux reconstruction numerical schemes to perform accurate and stable computations of compressible turbulent flows on coarse meshes is investigated. Two new flux reconstruction schemes, which arc optimized for wave dissipation and dispersion properties, are compared to the nodal discontinuous Galerkin and spectral difference methods recovered via the energy-stable flux reconstruction method. The Taylor-Green vortex benchmark problem at Re = 1600 is used as a simple a priori test of the numerics. Dissipation rates computed from kinetic energy, vorticity, and pressure dilatation are plotted against reference solutions. Results show that, at low mesh resolution, the flux reconstruction schemes are highly accurate across a range of orders of accuracy, although oscillations can appear in the solution at orders of six and above. Although the flux reconstruction method has a built-in stabilization mechanism, an additional means of damping these instabilities is required. The schemes vary in the amount of numerical dissipation and resolution of the turbulent spectrum. One of the optimized flux reconstruction schemes (the optimized flux reconstruction scheme) is shown to have greater spectral accuracy than any of the others tested, motivating its future usage for high-order high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structure-based turbulence models (SBM) carry information about the turbulence structure that is needed for the prediction of complex non-equilibrium flows. SBM have been successfully used to predict a number of canonical flows, yet their adoption rate in engineering practice has been relatively low, mainly because of their departure from standard closure formulations, which hinders easy implementation in existing codes. Here, we demonstrate the coupling between the Algebraic Structure-Based Model (ASBM) and the one-equation Spalart–Allmaras (SA) model, which provides an easy route to bringing structure information in engineering turbulence closures. As the ASBM requires correct predictions of two turbulence scales, which are not taken into account in the SA model, Bradshaw relations and numerical optimizations are used to provide the turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation rate. Attention is paid to the robustness and accuracy of the hybrid model, showing encouraging results for a number of simple test cases. An ASBM module in Fortran-90 is provided along with the present paper in order to facilitate the testing of the model by interested readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have correlated kinetic energy (KE) and viscous dissipation rate (VDR) in the left ventricle (LV) with heart health. These studies have relied on 4D-flow imaging or computational fluid dynamics modeling, which are able to measure, or compute, all 3 components (3C) of the blood flow velocity in 3 dimensional (3D) space. This richness of data is difficult to acquire clinically. Alternatively, color Doppler echocardiography (CDE) is more widespread clinically, but only measures a single radial component of velocity and typically only over a planar section. Because of this limitation, prior CDE-based studies have first reconstructed a second component of velocity in the measurement plane prior to evaluating VDR or KE. Herein, we propose 1C-based surrogates of KE and VDR that can be derived directly from the radial component of the flow velocity in the LV. Our results demonstrate that the proposed 1C-based surrogates of KE and VDR are generally as well-correlated with the true KE and VDR values as surrogates that use reconstructed 2C flow data. Moreover, the correlation of these 1C-based surrogates with the true values indicate that CDE (3D in particular) may be useful in evaluating these metrics in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of varying tip clearance widths on tip flows dynamics and main flows characteristics for an axial-flow pump are studied employing computational fluid dynamics method. An analysis is presented for the distributions of turbulent kinetic energy, mean axial velocity, and mean vorticity magnitude at the specific flow rate of 0.7 Q BEP , focusing on flow patterns in the tip region with different tip clearance widths and associated flows. From the simulation results we find that the flow structure of tip vortex and its transportation strongly depend on the tip clearance width, especially for the extension of tip leakage vortex, appearance of induced vortex and the area of tip separation vortex. For a small clearance of 0.15 mm at 0.7 Q BEP , there is no tip separation vortex at the tip. When tip clearance width becomes larger, a tip separation vortex attaches more on the surface of blade tip as well as vortex intensity of tip flows increases. For tip clearances of 0.9 and 1.2 mm, there is a small part of induced vortex near the blade leading edge. Meanwhile, no induced vortex can be captured for tip clearances of 0.15 and 0.45 mm. The relative angle between the blade chord and tip leakage vortex trajectory reduces gradually when tip clearance width increases from 0.45 to 1.2 mm. Additionally, the radial position of tip leakage vortex core moves inwards as tip clearance width increases. Furthermore, a larger tip clearance width has greater effects on the main-stream characteristics especially near the shroud, which is due to more energy being exchanged between tip flows and main flows. At the flow rate 0.7 Q BEP , both the efficiency and head of the pump reduce with an increasing tip clearance because of greater energy loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]