The Impact of Fluid Dynamic Stress in Stirred Bioreactors – The Scale of the Biological Entity: A Personal View

From the start of industrial biotechnology, there has been a perception that biological entities are damaged by stirring, so-called ‘shear damage'. Often, it was the soft option to explain a loss of performance when it was due to other factors, such as bubble ingestion with proteins or on scale-up, where tip speed increased when it was due to decreased homogeneity, especially in pH. For many years, poor control and the range of analytical tools available made a more in-depth explanation difficult; and the concepts of ‘high' and ‘low shear' impellers, now largely disproven, increased it. Here, the size of the biological entity is compared to the Kolmogorov microscale of turbulence leading to a reasonably clear picture emerging. The article starts with the author's introduction to the issue approximately 42 year ago with enzymes, conveniently also the smallest entity; and finishes with the largest, filamentous fungi.     

Studying Fluid Characteristics Atop Surface Patterned Membranes via Particle Image Velocimetry

Surface patterning is a recent promising approach to promote performance of pressure-driven membranes in water treatment and desalination. Nevertheless, knowledge about foulant deposition mechanisms, especially at early stage of filtration, is still lacking. The applicability of particle imaging velocimetry to study fluid characteristics atop surface patterned thin-film composite membranes was investigated at different operating conditions. This work is an important first step toward reliable understanding of the impacts of topographical membrane surface modification on hydrodynamic conditions and foulant deposition mechanisms.     

Assessment of Grinding Fluid Effectiveness in Continuous-Dress Creep Feed Grinding

Creep feed grinding is a high-productivity abrasive removal process that is often limited by thermal damage and high wheel wear. A review of current industrial practices in the area of fluid supply optimisation in grinding shows that very little knowledge of the pressure, flowrate and method of application exists in industry. This paper presents an experimental procedure to evaluate fluid supply conditions in grinding on a continuous-dress creep feed grinder. Using tapered workpieces, the authors have evaluated the influence of wheel speed and material removal rate on grinding fluid effectiveness, based on the material removal rate at the position of the wheel along the ramp when burn starts to occur and the corresponding spindle power surge. Correlations are investigated between visible discoloration, metallurgical examinations and change in spindle power, in order to establish the onset of grinding burn. This procedure serves to determine the upper limit of material removal rate or - respectively - the lower limit of fluid flow rate for given grinding systems consisting of specified wheel type, material type, fluid type and fluid supply nozzle. The advantage of the presented method is its easy and time saving application in industry, but it is also of help to researchers who need to optimise fluid supply conditions prior to their grinding tests.     

THREE-DIMENSIONAL NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF AERATED FLOWS DOWNSTREAM SUDDEN FALL AERATOR EXPANSION-IN A TUNNEL

Air entrainment is known to be one of efficient and inexpensive methods to prevent cavitation damages in hydropower projects.The shape of sudden expansion-fall is used as a common device for mitigating cavitation erosions.The complex flow patterns with cavitation are numerically simulated by using the realizable k-εturbulence model and the air-water mixture model.The calculated results are compared well with the experimental results as well as those obtained with the k-εturbulence model with the Volume Of Fluid(VOF)Model.The calculated results agree well with the experimental data for the aeration cavity and wall pressure.Moreover,the air concentration near sidewall is simulated by a mixture model.It is found that the mixture turbulence model is superior to the VOF turbulence model.     

《飞行工程力学》多媒体教学与实践

<飞行工程力学>课程要在突出专业特色方面有所突破和创新,教学内容要与部队、航理、装备密切结合.为此,在教学中利用课件将隐蔽、复杂的航空飞机结构材料转变成为直观、生动、形象的音、视频多媒体材料.     

On the effect of wind direction and urban surroundings on natural ventilation of a large semi-enclosed stadium

Natural ventilation of buildings refers to the replacement of indoor air with outdoor air due to pressure differences caused by wind and/or buoyancy. It is often expressed in terms of the air change rate per hour (ACH). The pressure differences created by the wind depend - among others - on the wind speed, the wind direction, the configuration of surrounding buildings and the surrounding topography. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been used extensively in natural ventilation research. However, most CFD studies were performed for only a limited number of wind directions and/or without considering the urban surroundings. This paper presents isothermal CFD simulations of coupled urban wind flow and indoor natural ventilation to assess the influence of wind direction and urban surroundings on the ACH of a large semi-enclosed stadium. Simulations are performed for eight wind directions and for a computational model with and without the surrounding buildings. CFD solution verification is conducted by performing a grid-sensitivity analysis. CFD validation is performed with on-site wind velocity measurements. The simulated differences in ACH between wind directions can go up to 75% (without surrounding buildings) and 152% (with surrounding buildings). Furthermore, comparing the simulations with and without surrounding buildings showed that neglecting the surroundings can lead to overestimations of the ACH with up to 96%.     

Adjustment of drag coefficient correlations in three dimensional CFD simulation of gas-solid bubbling fluidized bed

Fluidized beds have been widely used in power generation and in chemical, biochemical, and petroleum industries. 3D simulation of commercial scale fluidized beds has been computationally impractical due to the required memory and processor speeds. In this study, 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation of a gas-solid bubbling fluidized bed is performed to investigate the effect of using different inter-phase drag models. The drag correlations of Richardon and Zaki, Wen-Yu, Gibilaro, Gidaspow, Syamlal-O’Brien, Arastoopour, RUC, Di Felice, Hill Koch Ladd, Zhang and Reese, and adjusted Syamlal are reviewed using a multiphase Eulerian-Eulerian model to simulate the momentum transfer between phases. Furthermore, a method has been proposed to adjust the Di Felice drag model in a three dimensional domain based on the experimental value of minimum fluidization velocity as a calibration point. Comparisons are made with both a 2D Cartesian simulation and experimental data. The experiments are performed on a Plexiglas rectangular fluidized bed consisting of spherical glass beads and ambient air as the gas phase. Comparisons were made based on solid volume fractions, expansion height, and pressure drop inside the fluidized bed at different superficial gas velocities. The results of the proposed drag model were found to agree well with experimental data. The effect of restitution coefficient on three dimensional prediction of bed height is also investigated and an optimum value of restitution coefficient for modeling fluidized beds in a bubbling regime has been proposed. Finally sensitivity analysis is performed on the grid interval size to obtain an optimum mesh size with the objective of accuracy and time efficiency.     

Unsteady fluid mechanics effects in water based human locomotion

Computational fluid mechanics (CFD) has made substantial progress on modelling a variety of important problems in industry. However, there is still lack of reliable methods to model the motion of the body in water. This is a central issue in understanding animal and human propulsion in water not only to advance science but to explore the possibility of utilising such propulsion modes for man made vehicles. The presented work identified the added mass effect as the prime contributor to propulsive force generation. The use of boundary element method (BEM) proved very successful as it allowed reducing this dynamic problem to a quasi-static one without sacrificing accuracy in the model. The comparison between the experimental data and the simulation result was in the range of 95% (average accuracy) suggesting that the added mass effect and dynamic lift and drag are the most significant physical phenomena in propulsive force generation despite the fact that there is undoubtedly and the presence of turbulent effects that were not considered.     

风机流场并行数值模拟在集群系统上的应用

介绍集群系统的特点及其软硬件配置环境。利用计算流体力学商用软件Fluent对一种新型垂直轴风力机风轮在曙光天潮超级服务器4000A集群上进行数值模拟及并行计算,得到风轮内外部的三维流场,实现该软件在高性能并行计算机上的应用,为并行有限元分析提供一个基础计算平台。