1,720,958 research outputs found

    Application of Uncertainty Quantification to the study of the exhaust plume impact on ship superstructures

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    The work carried out during the PhD led to the implementation of a procedure for studying the propagation of uncertainty on the results of fluid dynamics simulations in the naval field on the impact of exhaust fumes on sensitive superstructures. The use of uncertainty analysis (Uncertainty Quantification) can provide planning and operative information to establish which are the most significant input variables and how they affect the final results. It is therefore possible to establish which are the most critical operating conditions. The UQ was applied to fluid dynamics simulations through the creation of an interface procedure between the CFD code (CFX®) and the open source software Dakota. The activity therefore first assessed the contributions of the input variables by carrying out preliminary simulations. The results showed that, according to what has been reported in the literature on the development of plumes subject to transverse currents, the variables that most influence the trajectory and impact of the exhaust fumes are the modulus of wind speed and fumes, which can be summarized as the R parameter and the direction of the main flow. In relation to this last quantity it was found that in the case in question the directions of the wind coming both from the stern and from the bow are significant. Subsequently, a literature test case of a single plume immersed in a prevailing flow was readjusted to set up an Uncertainty Quantification procedure and test different methods for analyzing the propagation of uncertainty. In particular, the following were assessed: the approach to constructing a surrogate model using sampling techniques and the Gaussian Process; the Polynomial Chaos (PCE) method. Finally, the PCE method was applied for the UQ on the available ship geometry by choosing the wind speed (in module and direction) and the external temperature as input variables

    The Use of CFD for the Design and Development of Innovative Configurations in Regenerative Glass Production Furnaces

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    The limitation of nitrogen oxides emissions is nowadays a challenge in several engineering fields. Recent European regulations have reduced the maximum NOx emissions and therefore forced the glass production sector to develop emission reduction strategies. Two different systems have been developed within the framework of the European LIFE project and are currently applied to glass regenerative furnaces: the Waste Gas Recirculation (WGR) and the Hybrid Air Staging (HyAS). The above systems are primary NOx reduction strategies because they both operate to control the combustion evolution. Both WGR and HyAS systems have been conceived with the extensive use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models: design strategies for both systems have been developed based on the use of CFD and are currently under use by glass furnace designers. In the present work, the CFD procedures routinely used for the design of the above systems are described. The systems effectiveness, due to the harsh conditions in the industrial installation, can be tested with oxygen concentration measurements inside the regenerators. The oxygen concentration is correlated to the flame evolution and therefore to the nitrogen oxides formation. For the above reason, the models have been validated with experimental data from pilot furnaces using measured values of O2 mole fraction. The CFD procedures are described in the paper together with their application to different configurations

    The Use of Uncertainty Quantification and Numerical Optimization to Support the Design and Operation Management of Air-Staging Gas Recirculation Strategies in Glass Furnaces

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    The reduction in energy consumption and the increasingly demanding emissions regulations have become strategic challenges for every industrial sector. In this context, the glass industry would be one of the most affected sectors due to its high energy demand and emissions productions, especially in terms of NOx. For this reason, various emission abatement systems have been developed in this field and one of the most used is the air staging system. It consists in injecting air into the upper part of the regenerative chamber on the exhaust gases side in order to create the conditions for combustion that reduces NOx emissions. In this work, the combined use of CFD with data analysis techniques offers a tool for the design and management of a hybrid air staging system. Surrogate models of the bypass mass flow rate and uniformity index in the regenerative chamber have been obtained starting from DoE based on different simulations by varying the air mass flow rate of the two injectors located in a bypass duct that connects the two regenerative chambers. This model allows a UQ analysis to verify how the uncertainty of the air injectors can affect the bypass mass flow rate. Finally, an optimization procedure has identified the optimal condition for the best bypass mass flow rates and uniformity of the oxygen concentration in the chamber. High values of the mass flow rate of the pros injector and medium-low values for the cons injectors are identified as operating parameters for best conditions

    Uncertainty Quantification Analysis of Exhaust Gas Plume in a Crosswind

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    The design of naval exhaust funnels has to take into account the interaction between the hot gases and topside structures, which usually includes critical electronic devices. Being able to predict the propagation trajectory, shape and temperature distribution of an exhaust gas plume is highly strategic in different industrial sectors. The propagation of a stack plume can be affected by different uncertainty factors, such as those related to the wind flow and gas flow conditions at the funnel exit. The constant growth of computational resources has allowed simulations to gain a key role in the early design phase. However, it is still difficult to model all the aspects of real physical problems in actual applications and, therefore, to completely rely upon the quantitative results of numerical simulations. One of the most important aspects is related to input variable uncertainty, which can significantly affect the simulation result. With this aim, the discipline of Uncertainty Quantification provides several methods to evaluate uncertainty propagation in numerical simulations. In this paper, UQ procedures are applied to a CFD simulation of a single plume in a crossflow. The authors test the influence of the uncertainty propagation of the chimney exit velocity and the main flow angle on the plume flow development. Two different UQ methods are applied to the analysis: the surrogate-based approach and the polynomial chaos expansion method. A comparison of the two methods is performed in order to find their pros and cons, focusing on the different and detailed quantities of interest

    Uncertainty Quantification Approach on Numerical Simulation for Supersonic Jets Performance

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    One of the main issues addressed in any engineering design problem is to predict the performance of the component or system as accurately and realistically as possible, taking into account the variability of operating conditions or the uncertainty on input data (boundary conditions or geometry tolerance). In this paper, the propagation of uncertainty on boundary conditions through a numerical model of supersonic nozzle is investigated. The evaluation of the statistics of the problem response functions is performed following ‘Surrogate-Based Uncertainty Quantification’. The approach involves: (a) the generation of a response surface starting from a DoE in order to approximate the convergent–divergent ‘physical’ model (expensive to simulate), (b) the application of the UQ technique based on the LHS to the meta-model. Probability Density Functions are introduced for the inlet boundary conditions in order to quantify their effects on the output nozzle performance. The physical problem considered is very relevant for the experimental tests on the UQ approach because of its high non-linearity. A small perturbation to the input data can drive the solution to a completely different output condition. The CFD simulations and the Uncertainty Quantification were performed by coupling the open source Dakota platform with the ANSYS Fluent® CFD commercial software: the process is automated through scripting. The procedure adopted in this work demonstrate the applicability of advanced simulation techniques (such as UQ analysis) to industrial technical problems. Moreover, the analysis highlights the practical use of the uncertainty quantification techniques in predicting the performance of a nozzle design affected by off-design conditions with fluid-dynamic complexity due to strong nonlinearity

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods
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