Low Reynolds number turbulent flows around a dynamically shaped airfoil

A computational investigation for flows surrounding a dynamically shaped airfoil, at a chord Reynolds number of 78,800, is conducted along with a parallel experimental effort. A piezo-actuated flap on the upper surface of a fixed airfoil is adopted for active control. The actuation frequency focused on is 500 Hz. The computational framework consists of a multi-block, moving grid technique, the eⁿ-based laminar-turbulent transition model, the two-equation turbulence closure, and a pressure-based flow solver. The moving grid technique, which handles the geometric variations in time, employs the transfinite interpolation scheme with a spring network approach. Comparing the experimental and computational results for pressure and velocity fields, implications of the detailed flap geometry, the flapping amplitude, turbulence modeling, and grid distributions on the flow structure are assessed. The effect of the flap movement on the separation location and vortex dynamics is also investigated.     

Thermal performances of enhanced smooth and spiky twisted tapes for laminar and turbulent tubular flows

This experimental study investigates the heat transfer properties over developing and developed flow regimes, the pressure drop coefficients and the thermal performance factors (TPF) of tubular flows with the continuous and spiky twist tapes enhanced by perforated, jagged and notched winglets. The axial distributions of Nusselt number (Nu) and the mean Fanning friction factors (f) of the tubular flows at Reynolds numbers (Re) ranging from 500 to 40000 are comparatively examined for five different types of twisted tapes with three twist ratios (y) of 1.875, 2.186 and 2.815 for each type of twisted tapes. Through this comparative study, the favorable types of twisted tapes which generate the higher degrees of HTE impacts over the developing and developed flow regimes are respectively identified. These newly devised twist tapes enrich the varieties of passive heat transfer enhancement (HTE) devices, especially for retrofit applications. A set of selective Nu and f results illustrates the thermal characteristics of the enhanced tubular flows by these twisted tapes. The HTE and TPF properties for all the present types of twisted tapes are subsequently compared with those reported for other types of twisted tapes in the literature. Among these comparative groups, the present V-notched spiky twisted tape generally offers the highest HTE impacts with favorable TPF performances. Empirical correlations that evaluate the averaged Nu over the developing and developed flow regimes; as well as and tube-wise averaged f for the enhanced tubular flows fitted with all the present types of twisted tapes are generated.     

MIXED CONVECTION INDUCED BY MEMS-BASED THERMAL SHEAR STRESS SENSORS

The effect of buoyancy caused by heat generation from a microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based thermal shear stress sensor is investigated. Due to the small size and relatively low power consumption of such sensors, the buoyancy effect on the overall flow structure is generally negligible. However, its impact on the flow variables such as shear stresses can be significant because such quantities are local and depend on the gradients of the velocity profile next to the sensor. Due to the small dimension of the MEMS sensor, a multiscale modeling approach is adopted to examine the effect of buoyancy on the velocity and wall shear stress profiles. Full-length channel computations are initially performed with finer resolution near the sensor region. Using the boundary conditions derived from the full-length computations, another simulation is performed concentrating on a small region near the shear stress sensor. Based on the temperature distribution in the region of the sensor, the effective thermal length scale is several times the streamwise dimension of the sensor. For a state-of-the-art MEMS sensor dimension of 200\,\mu {\bf m} , the effect of buoyancy on the accuracy of shear stress measurement can be noticeable.     

INCOMPRESSIBLE FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER COMPUTATIONS USING A CONTINUOUS PRESSURE EQUATION AND NONSTAGGERED GRIDS

A pressure-based algorithm for incompressible flows is presented. The algorithm employs a finite-volume discretization in general curvilinear coordinates on a nonstaggered mesh. This approach is derived from a finite-element algorithm, and is here extended to the finite-volume/finite-difference context. The algorithm can be classified as a SIMPLE-like sequential method, and is validated in two classical test cases: the lid-driven cavity and the differentially heated cavity problems. Good results, with no pressure checkerboarding, are achieved up to Reynolds numbers Re = 10⁴ and Rayleigh numbers Ra = 10⁸ , respectively.     

Checkerboard and minimum member size control in topology optimization

Checkerboard-like material distributions are frequently encountered in topology optimization of continuum structures, especially when first order finite elements are used. It has been shown that this phenomenon is caused by errors in the finite element formulation. Minimum member size control is closely related to the problem of mesh dependency of solutions in topology optimization. With increasing mesh density, the solution of a broad class of problems tends to form an increasing number of members with decreasing size. Different approaches have been developed in recent years to overcome these numerical difficulties. However, limitations exist for those methods, either in generality or in efficiency. In this paper, a new algorithm for checkerboard and direct minimum member size control has been developed that is applicable to the general problem formulation involving multiple constraints. This method is implemented in the commercial software Altair OptiStruct. March 22, 2000     

Comparing error estimation measures for polynomial and kriging approximation of noise-free functions

Error estimation measures are useful for assessing uncertainty in surrogate predictions. We use a suite of test problems to appraise several error estimation measures for polynomial response surfaces and kriging. In addition, we study the performance of cross-validation error measures that can be used with any surrogate. We use 1,000 experimental designs to obtain the variability of error estimates with respect to the experimental designs for each problem. We find that the (actual) errors for polynomial response surfaces are less sensitive to the choice of experimental designs than the kriging errors. This is attributed to the variability in the maximum likelihood estimates of the kriging parameters. We find that no single error measure outperforms other measures on all the problems. Computationally expensive integrated local error measures (standard error for polynomials and mean square error for kriging) estimate the actual root mean square error very well. The distribution-free cross-validation error characterized the actual errors reasonably well. While the estimated root mean square error for polynomial response surface is a good estimate of the actual errors, the process variance for kriging is not. We explore a few methods of simultaneously using multiple error measures and demonstrate that the geometric means of several combinations of error measures improve the assessment of the actual errors over individual error measures.     

Ensemble of surrogates

The custom in surrogate-based modeling of complex engineering problems is to fit one or more surrogate models and select the one surrogate model that performs best. In this paper, we extend the utility of an ensemble of surrogates to (1) identify regions of possible high errors at locations where predictions of surrogates widely differ, and (2) provide a more robust approximation approach. We explore the possibility of using the best surrogate or a weighted average surrogate model instead of individual surrogate models. The weights associated with each surrogate model are determined based on the errors in surrogates. We demonstrate the advantages of an ensemble of surrogates using analytical problems and one engineering problem. We show that for a single problem the choice of test surrogate can depend on the design of experiments.     

The design and implementation of K: a high-level knowledge-base programming language of OSAM*.KBMS

The OSAM*.KBMS is a knowledge-base management system, or the so-called next-generation database management system, for non-traditional data/knowledge-intensive applications. In order to define, query, and manipulate a knowledge base, as well as to write codes to implement any application system, we have developed an object-oriented knowledge-base programming language called K to serve as the high-level interface of OSAM*.KBMS. This paper presents the design of K, its implementation, and its supporting KBMS developed at the Database Systems Research and Development Center of the University of Florida. Edited by Dennis McLeod. Received July 1992 / Accepted August 1995