Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item DIRECT NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF TRANSITIONAL PULSATILE FLOWS(2008-07-11) Beratlis, Nikolaos George; Balaras, Elias; Mechanical Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the present work a numerical study of transitional pulsatile flow through planar and cylindrical constrictions is presented. First, a simulation carefully coordinated with an experiment is carried out for validation purposes and results are in good agreement with the experiment. The parametric space that we adopted is similar to the one reported in a variety of past experiments relevant to the flow through stenosed arteries. In general, the flow just downstream of the constriction is dominated by the dynamics of the accelerating/decelerating jet that forms during each pulsatile cycle. It is found that the disturbance environment upstream of the stenosis has an effect on the spatial and temporal localization of the transition process in the post-stenotic area. The flow in the reattached area further downstream, is also affected by the jet dynamics. A 'synthetic', turbulent-like, wall-layer develops, and is constantly supported by streamwise vortices that originate from the spanwise instabilities of the large, coherent structures generated by the jet. The relation of these structures to the phase-averaged turbulent statistics and the turbulent kinetic energy budgets is discussed. The flow physics in the cylindrical configuration are qualitatively similar to those in the planar cases. The effect of blood rheology on the flow characteristics is also assessed by employing a biviscosity model in the simulations and it is found not to have a big effect on the turbulent intensities.Item Direct Numerical Simulation of Non-premixed Combustion with Soot and Thermal Radiation(2005-07-14) Wang, Yi; Trouve, Arnaud; Mechanical Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Direct numerical simulation (DNS) is a productive research tool in combustion science used to provide high-fidelity computer-based observations of the micro-physics in turbulent reacting flows. It is also a unique tool for the development and validation of reduced model descriptions used in macro-scale simulations of engineering-level systems. Because of its high demand of computational power, current state-of-the-art DNS remains limited to small computational domains, small Reynolds numbers, and simplified problems corresponding to adiabatic, non-sooting, gaseous flames in simple geometries. This Ph.D. study is part of a multi-institution collaborative research project aimed at using terascale technology to overcome many of the current DNS limitations. Two different tracks are followed in the present work: a DNS development track, and a DNS production track corresponding to a study of flame-wall interactions. Due to project management issues, the two tracks remain separate in this work. In the first track, we develop numerical and physical models to enhance the capability of our fully compressible DNS solver for turbulent combustion. The Acoustic Speed Reduction (ASR) method is a new perturbation method designed to reduce the stiffness associated with acoustic waves found in slow flow simulations and to thereby enhance computational efficiency. The Navier-Stokes Characteristic Boundary Conditions (NSCBC) are modified to allow for successful simulations of turbulent counterflow flames. In addition, a semi-empirical soot model and a parallel thermal radiation model based on a ray-tracing method are developed and implemented into our DNS code. All the models are validated, showing that the capability of our DNS tool is greatly enhanced. In the second track, we perform a DNS study of non-premixed flame-wall interactions. The structure of the simulated wall flames is studied in terms of a classical fuel-air-based mixture fraction and a new variable, called the excess enthalpy variable, which characterizes deviations from adiabatic behavior. Using the excess enthalpy variable, a modified flame extinction criterion is proposed and tested against DNS data. While beyond the scope of this Ph.D. thesis, it is expected that follow-up studies of flame-wall interactions will take advantage of the new DNS software features developed in the first track of the present work.Item Low-dimensional models for fluid flow(2004-08-24) Kalb, Virginia; Deane, Anil; Mathematics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Despite the temporal and spatial complexity of fluid flow, model dimensionality can often be greatly reduced while both capturing and illuminating the nonlinear dynamics of the flow. This dissertation follows the methodology of direct numerical simulation (DNS) followed by Proper Orthogonal Decomposition of temporally sampled DNS data to derive temporal and spatial eigenfunctions. The DNS calculations use Chorin's projection scheme; 2-d validation and results are presented for driven cavity and square cylinder wake flows. The flow velocity is expressed as a linear combination of the spatial eigenfunctions with time-dependent coefficients. Galerkin projection of these modes onto the Navier-Stokes equations obtains a dynamical system with quadratic nonlinearity and explicit Reynolds number (Re) dependence. Truncated to retain only the most energetic modes produces a low-dimensional model for the flow at the decomposition Re. This dissertation demonstrates that these low-dimensional models reproduce the flow dynamics, but with small errors in amplitude, phase, and particularly long term dynamics. A new stabilization algorithm is presented that projects the error onto the derived temporal eigenfunctions, then modifies the dynamical system coefficients to significantly reduce these errors. Its effectiveness is demonstrated with low-dimensional dynamical systems for driven cavity flow in the periodic regime, quasi-periodic flow at Re 10000, and the wake flow. This dissertation also addresses the task of obtaining more useful models that are valid over a range of Reynolds numbers. Straightforward Re-based parameter continuation applied to extrapolate the model proves inadequate for successful flow prediction. A new concept of parameterizing the dynamical system coefficients is introduced that utilizes the kinetic energy transfer between modes as a function of Re to predict the flow dynamics correctly. Results for the driven cavity flow include a minimal four-mode dynamical system that captures the flow dynamics for Re up to 10000. A four-mode dynamical system for the square cylinder wake flow demonstrates accurate amplitude predictions for Re up to 100. The most robust low-dimensional models are obtained by further including a model for the frequency variation with Re. Low-dimensional models that incorporate spatial mode changes with Re are developed and quantitatively assessed for both test flows.