MHD channel flow control in 2D: Mixing enhancement by boundary feedback

A nonlinear Lyapunov-based boundary feedback control law is proposed for mixing enhancement in a 2D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) channel flow, also known as Hartmann flow, which is electrically conducting, incompressible, and subject to an external transverse magnetic field. The MHD model is a combination of the Navier-Stokes PDE and the Magnetic Induction PDE, which is derived from the Maxwell equations. Pressure sensors, magnetic field sensors, and micro-jets embedded into the walls of the flow domain are employed for mixing enhancement feedback. The proposed control law, designed using passivity ideas, is optimal in the sense that it maximizes a measure related to mixing (which incorporates stretching and folding of material elements), while at the same time minimizing the control and sensing efforts. A DNS code is developed, based on a hybrid Fourier pseudospectral-finite difference discretization and the fractional step technique, to numerically assess the controller.     

Direct numerical simulations of transverse and spanwise magnetic field effects on turbulent flow in a 2:1 aspect ratio rectangular duct

Magnetic fields are used extensively to direct liquid metal flows in material processing. Continuous casting of steel uses different configurations of magnetic fields to optimize turbulent flows in rectangular cross-sections to minimize defects in the solidified steel product. Realizing the importance of a magnetic field on turbulent flows in rectangular cross-sections, the present work is aimed at understanding the effect of a magnetic field on the turbulent metal flow at a nominal bulk Reynolds number of ∼5300 (based upon full duct height) (Re_τ = 170, based upon half duct height) and Hartmann numbers (based upon half duct height) of 0, 6.0 and 8.25 in a 2:1 aspect ratio rectangular duct. Direct numerical simulations in a non-MHD 2:1 aspect ratio duct followed by simulations with transverse and span-wise magnetic fields have been performed with 224 × 120 × 512 cells (∼13.7 million cells). The fractional step method with second order space and time discretization schemes has been used to solve the coupled Navier-Stokes-MHD equations. Instantaneous and time-averaged natures of the flow have been examined through distribution of velocities, various turbulence parameters and budget terms. Spanwise (horizontal) magnetic field reorganizes and suppresses secondary flows more strongly. Turbulence suppression and velocity flattening effects are stronger with transverse (vertical) magnetic field.     

Meshless local boundary integral equation (LBIE) method for the unsteady magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow in rectangular and circular pipes

The meshless local boundary integral equation (LBIE) method is given to obtain the numerical solution of the coupled equations in velocity and magnetic field for unsteady magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow through a pipe of rectangular and circular sections with non-conducting walls. Computations have been carried out for different Hartmann numbers and at various time levels. The method is based on the local boundary integral equation with moving least squares (MLS) approximation. For the MLS, nodal points spread over the analyzed domain, are utilized to approximate the interior and boundary variables. A time stepping method is employed to deal with the time derivative. Finally, numerical results are presented to show the behaviour of velocity and induced magnetic field.     

Computation of MHD flow due to moving boundaries

A non-iterative numerical scheme is presented which computes in a single iteration the steady, laminar flow of a viscous, incompressible, electrically conducting fluid caused by moving boundaries in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. It also eliminates the possible error induced by taking the value of numerical infinity (representing the unbounded domain of the flow) as a finite number. The scheme is based on implicit use of infinite series of exponentials for velocity components. The issue of convergence of these series is also discussed. An asymptotic solution valid for large values of M, the Hartmann number, and an approximate solution valid for any value of M are further developed. In particular, the case of axisymmetric magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow due to a stretching sheet has been dealt with in some detail. A comparison has been made of the merits of various techniques used in the paper and appropriate conclusions are drawn.     

Numerical solution of singularly perturbed two point boundary value problems by spline in compression

Some difference schemes for singularly perturbed two point boundary value problems are derived using spline in compression. These schemes are second order accurate. Numerical examples are given in support of the theoretical results.     

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow of a micropolar fluid towards a stagnation point on a vertical surface

The steady MHD mixed convection stagnation point flow towards a vertical surface immersed in an incompressible micropolar fluid is investigated. The external velocity impinges normal to the wall and the wall temperature is assumed to vary linearly with the distance from the stagnation point. The governing partial differential equations are transformed into a system of ordinary differential equations, which is then solved numerically by a finite-difference method. The features of the flow and heat transfer characteristics for different values of the governing parameters are analyzed and discussed. Both assisting and opposing flows are considered. It is found that dual solutions exist for the assisting flow, besides that usually reported in the literature for the opposing flow.     

A new analytical study of MHD stagnation-point flow in porous media with heat transfer

The similarity solution for the MHD Hiemenz flow against a flat plate with variable wall temperature in a porous medium gives a system of nonlinear partial differential equations. These equations are solved analytically by using a novel analytical method (DTM-Padé technique which is a combination of the differential transform method and the Padé approximation). This method is applied to give solutions of nonlinear differential equations with boundary conditions at infinity. Graphical results are presented to investigate influence of the Prandtl number, permeability parameter, Hartmann number and suction/blowing parameter on the velocity and temperature profiles.     

A novel operational matrix method for solving singularly perturbed boundary value problems of fractional multi-order

In this paper, we will consider a wide class of singularly perturbed problems described by the differential equation of fractional multi-order with small parameter multiplying the highest derivative and the appropriate boundary conditions. We construct the linear B-spline operational matrix of fractional derivative in the Caputo sense and introduce a new operational method to solve the mentioned problems. The main characteristic behind this method is that it converts such problems to a system of algebraic equations and overcomes the difficulty and computational complexity induced by the problem. Some illustrative examples are included to demonstrate the validity and applicability of the method.     

Slip effects on MHD mixed convection stagnation point flow of a micropolar fluid towards a shrinking vertical sheet

In the present study, the effects of partial slip on steady boundary layer stagnation point flow of an electrically conducting micropolar fluid impinging normally towards a shrinking sheet in the presence of a uniform transverse magnetic field is investigated. A similarity transformation technique is adopted to obtain the self similar ordinary differential equations and then solved numerically using symbolic software MATHEMATICA 7.0. The features of the flow and heat transfer characteristics for different values of the governing parameters are analyzed and discussed through graphs and tables. Both cases of assisting and opposing flows are considered. The physical aspects of the problem are highlighted and discussed.     

MHD flow in porous medium induced by torsionally oscillating disk

The unsteady laminar flow of an incompressible, viscous, electrically conducting fluid in porous medium fully saturated with the liquid and bounded by torsionally oscillating disk in the presence of a transverse magnetic field has been computed. It is assumed that the flow between the disk and the porous medium is governed by Navier-Stokes equation and that in the porous medium by Brinkman equation. Flows in the two regions are matched at the interface by assuming that the velocity and stress components are continuous at it. Approximate solutions of the flow characteristics are obtained. Numerical results are presented graphically and discussed.     

Numerical solution of a singularly perturbed three-point boundary value problem

We consider a uniform finite difference method on an S-mesh (Shishkin type mesh) for a singularly perturbed semilinear one-dimensional convection–diffusion three-point boundary value problem with zeroth-order reduced equation. We show that the method is first-order convergent in the discrete maximum norm, independently of the perturbation parameter except for a logarithmic factor. An effective iterative algorithm for solving the non-linear difference problem and some numerical results are presented.     

Constraint preserving boundary conditions for the Ideal Newtonian MHD equations

We study and develop constraint preserving boundary conditions for the Newtonian magnetohydrodynamic equations and analyze the behavior of the numerical solution upon considering different possible options. We concentrate on both the standard ideal MHD system and the one augmented by a “pseudo potential” to control the divergence free constraint. We show how the boundary conditions developed significantly reduce the violations generated at the boundaries at the numerical level and how lessen their influence in the interior of the computational domain by making use of the available freedom in the equations.     

The extended homotopy perturbation method for the boundary layer flow due to a stretching sheet with partial slip

A fully analytical solution of the steady, laminar and axisymmetric flow of a Newtonian fluid due to a stretching sheet when there is a partial slip of the fluid past the sheet has been derived using the extended homotopy perturbation method. The solution differs from that obtained by the classical homotopy perturbation method in that it is capable of generating a totally analytical solution up to any desired degree of accuracy and is not limited to the first-order correction terms. For an eight-decimal accuracy, it is sufficient to take 12 terms in the power series in the perturbation parameter, provided that use is made of Shanks’ transformation. Unlike other similar problems involving mass transfer across the sheet and/or the presence of a transverse magnetic field, the solution for the present problem is relatively insensitive to the velocity slip parameter.     

A non-stiff boundary integral method for 3D porous media flow with surface tension

We present an efficient, non-stiff boundary integral method for 3D porous media flow with surface tension. Surface tension introduces high order (i.e., high derivative) terms into the evolution equations, and this leads to severe stability constraints for explicit time-integration methods. Furthermore, the high order terms appear in non-local operators, making the application of implicit methods difficult. Our method uses the fundamental coefficients of the surface as dynamical variables, and employs a special isothermal parameterization of the interface which enables efficient application of implicit or linear propagator time-integration methods via a small-scale decomposition. The method is tested by computing the relaxation of an interface to a flat surface under the action of surface tension. These calculations employ an approximate interface velocity to test the stiffness reduction of the method. The approximate velocity has the same mathematical form as the exact velocity, but avoids the numerically intensive computation of the full Birkhoff–Rott integral. The algorithm is found to be effective at eliminating the severe time-step constraint that plagues explicit time-integration methods.     

Implicit midpoint rule and extrapolation to singularly perturbed boundary alue problems

Linear singularly perturbed boundary value probleme εy″?py = f(x), y(0) = y(l) = 0 is solved numerically by reducing to the first order linear system and applying the implicit midpoint rule on equidistant meshes. Using the asymptotic expansion of the global error, the second order of convergence is improved by Richardson extrapolation when h ²≤ε. Some numerical examples are given in illustration of this theory.     

MHD flow past a circular cylinder using the immersed boundary method

The immersed boundary method (IB hereafter) is an efficient numerical methodology for treating purely hydrodynamic flows in geometrically complicated flow-domains. Recently Grigoriadis et als. [1] proposed an extension of the IB method that accounts for electromagnetic effects near non-conducting boundaries in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows. The proposed extension (hereafter called MIB method) integrates naturally within the original IB concept and is suitable for magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of liquid metal flows. It is based on the proper definition of an externally applied current density field in order to satisfy the Maxwell equations in the presence of arbitrarily-shaped, non-conducting immersed boundaries. The efficiency of the proposed method is achieved by fast direct solutions of the two poisson equations for the hydrodynamic pressure and the electrostatic potential.The purpose of the present study is to establish the performance of the new MIB method in challenging configurations for which sufficient details are available in the literature. For this purpose, we have considered the classical MHD problem of a conducting fluid that is exposed to an external magnetic field while flowing across a circular cylinder with electrically insulated boundaries. Two- and three-dimensional, steady and unsteady, flow regimes were examined for Reynolds numbers Re_d ranging up to 200 based on the cylinder’s diameter. The intensity of the external magnetic field, as characterized by the magnetic interaction parameter N, varied from N=0 for the purely hydrodynamic cases up to N=5 for the MHD cases. For each simulation, a sufficiently fine Cartesian computational mesh was selected to ensure adequate resolution of the thin boundary layers developing due to the magnetic field, the so called Hartmann and sidewall layers. Results for a wide range of flow and magnetic field strength parameters show that the MIB method is capable of accurately reproducing integral parameters, such as the lift and drag coefficients, as well as the geometrical details of the recirculation zones. The results of the present study suggest that the proposed MIB methodology provides a powerful numerical tool for accurate MHD simulations, and that it can extend the applicability of existing Cartesian flow solvers as well as the range of computable MHD flows. Moreover, the new MIB method has been used to carrry out a series of accurate simulations allowing the determination of asymptotic laws for the lift and drag coefficients and the extent of the recirculation length as a function of the amplitude of the magnetic field. These results are reported herein.     

Adaptive boundary layer meshing for viscous flow simulations

A procedure for anisotropic mesh adaptation accounting for mixed element types and boundary layer meshes is presented. The method allows to automatically construct meshes on domains of interest to accurately and efficiently compute key flow quantities, especially near wall quantities like wall shear stress. The new adaptive approach uses local mesh modification procedures in a manner that maintains layered and graded elements near the walls, which are popularly known as boundary layer or semi-structured meshes, with highly anisotropic elements of mixed topologies. The technique developed is well suited for viscous flow applications where exact knowledge of the mesh resolution over the computational domain required to accurately resolve flow features of interest is unknown a priori. We apply the method to two types of problem cases; the first type, which lies in the field of hemodynamics, involves pulsatile flow in blood vessels including a porcine aorta case with a stenosis bypassed by a graft whereas the other involves high-speed flow through a double throat nozzle encountered in the field of aerodynamics.     

Solution of magnetohydrodynamic flow in a rectangular duct by differential quadrature method

The polynomial based differential quadrature and the Fourier expansion based differential quadrature method are applied to solve magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow equations in a rectangular duct in the presence of a transverse external oblique magnetic field. Numerical solution for velocity and induced magnetic field is obtained for the steady-state, fully developed, incompressible flow of a conducting fluid inside of the duct. Equal and unequal grid point discretizations are both used in the domain and it is found that the polynomial based differential quadrature method with a reasonable number of unequally spaced grid points gives accurate numerical solution of the MHD flow problem. Some graphs are presented showing the behaviours of the velocity and the induced magnetic field for several values of Hartmann number, number of grid points and the direction of the applied magnetic field.     

Uniformly convergent second-order difference scheme for a singularly perturbed periodical boundary value problem

A periodic boundary value problem with a small parameter multiplying the first- and second-order derivatives is considered. The problem is discretized using a hybrid difference scheme on a Shishkin mesh. We show that the scheme is almost second-order convergent in the maximum norm, which is independent of a singular perturbation parameter. Numerical experiment supports these theoretical results.