1,721,002 research outputs found

    Investigation of the gap vortex street in densely packed tube arrays in axial flow using CFD and experiments

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    Axial flow in tube bundles with small pitch-to-diameter ratio, a geometry encountered in nuclear reactor cores and heat exchangers, often displays periodic fluctuations. A significant velocity discrepancy between the inter-cylinder gap and subchannel center originates from the difference in through-flow area, feeding an instability. As it is associated with velocity-shear, it is similar to the Kelvin-Helmholtz type and the term 'gap instability' is adopted. A vortex street arises and structural vibration of the cylinders might develop due to the fluctuating pressure. Numerical simulations of this phenomenon were performed. The computational domain was constructed to match the most important geometrical features of an experimental setup. The bundle consists of 7 steel tubes in triangular array, placed in a hexagonal conduit. A flexible segment made of silicone is embedded in the central tube, with both extremes clamped to the steel parts of the cylinder. In the experiment, data of the fluctuating velocity was gathered using laser Doppler anemometry measurements. As first step, a completely rigid structure was considered. Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) simulations were used to test if this particular geometry also triggers the gap vortex street, which was the case. The phenomenon clearly appears as oscillations of the velocity components. Subsequently, fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations, taking into account the flexible part, allowed to assess the effect of the fluctuating flow field on the structure. A comparison between one-way and two-way coupled simulations was made.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.RST/Reactor Physics and Nuclear Material

    FDBB: Fluid dynamics building blocks

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    High-performance computing platforms are becoming more and more heterogeneous, which makes it very difficult for researchers and scientific software developers to keep up with the rapid changes on the hardware market. In this paper, the open-source project FDBB (Fluid Dynamics Building Blocks) is presented, which eases the development of fluid dynamics applications for heterogeneous systems. It consists of a low-level API that provides a unified interface to many different linear algebra back-ends and a lightweight and extendible high-level expression template library, which provides largely customizable fluid dynamics building blocks, like transformations between primary and secondary variables as well as expressions for Riemann invariants, equations of state, inviscid fluxes and their flux-Jacobians. The performance of the developed approach is assessed both for synthetic micro-benchmarks and within mini-applications.Accepted Author ManuscriptNumerical Analysi

    Taylor least squares reconstruction technique for material point methods

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    The material point method (MPM) is an effective computational tool for simulating problems involving large deformations. However, its direct mapping of the material-point data to the background grid frequently leads to severe inaccuracies. The standard function reconstruction techniques can considerably decrease these errors, but do not always guarantee the conservation of the total mass and linear momentum as the MPM algorithm does. In this paper, we introduce a novel technique, called Taylor Least Squares (TLS), which combines the Least Squares approximation with Taylor basis functions to reconstruct functions from scattered data. Within each element, the TLS technique approximates quantities of interest, such as stress and density, and when used with a suitable quadrature rule, it conserves the total mass and linear momentum after mapping the material-point information to the grid. The numerical and physical properties of the reconstruction technique are first illustrated on one- and two-dimensional functions. Then the TLS technique is tested as part of MPM, Dual Domain Material Point Method (DDMPM), and B-spline MPM (BSMPM) on a one-dimensional problem experiencing small and large deformations. The obtained results show that applying the TLS approximation significantly improves the accuracy of the considered versions of the material point method, while preserving the physical properties of the standard MPM.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Numerical Analysi

    Spline-based meshing techniques for industrial applications

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    Isogeometric Analysis (IgA) has become an accepted framework for the mod-elling, simulation and optimization (MSO) of engineering processes. However, the fully automatized generation of analysis-suitable parameterizations of geometries as they arise in practical workflows is still a challenging task, which often requires application-specific parameterization approaches. In this article we present a practical approach [6] based on the principles of Elliptic Grid Generation (EGG) for the efficient on-demand generation of analysis-suitable spline-based parameterizations. Starting from a (point cloud) description of the boundary provided by the existing MSO-pipeline, an inverse nonlinear Poisson-type problem is solved to obtain a folding-free (planar) parameterization of the entire domain. The non-linearity is efficiently treated with a globalized hierarchical Newton approach. Automatized boundary contour reparameterization techniques are employed to improve the parametric properties from a numerical viewpoint, such as orthogonal isolines and equally-sized cells. The use of curved instead of straight-sided elements allows us to arrive at an accurate description of the target domain with fewer elements and thus potentially lower computational effort. Numerical experiments with screw-compressor geometries demonstrate that the proposed algorithm reliably produces high-quality parameterizations typically within 3−4 Newton-iterations, even in the presence of extreme aspect-ratios. This makes it particularly attractive for the on-demand application within an automatized industrial MSO-pipeline. To support the demands of modern high-performance computing hardware, only a moderate number of sufficiently large and structured patches is generated which can be mapped one-by-one to the different devices (CPUs/GPUs) with only little communication overhead. Topology changes are avoided in time-dependent and shape-optimization settings. Finally, the spline-based geometry description can be transformed into a classical mesh by performing a large number of function evaluations in the mapping operator. Its continuous nature allows for feature-based (structured and unstructured) refinement and arbitrary element densities without increasing the complexity of the meshing process.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Numerical Analysi

    Symbolic regression of algebraic stress-strain relation for RANS turbulence closure

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    In this work recent advancements are presented in utilising deterministic symbolic regression to infer algebraic models for turbulent stress-strain relation with sparsity-promoting regression techniques. The goal is to build a functional expression from a set of candidate functions in order to represent the target data most accurately. Targets are the coefficients of a polynomial tensor basis, which are identified from high-fidelity data using regularised least-square regression. The method successfully identified a correction term for the benchmark test case of flow over periodic hills in 2D at Reh = 10595.Aerodynamic

    A high order hybrid mimetic discretization on curvilinear quadrilateral meshes for complex geometries

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    In this paper, we present a hybrid mimetic method which solves the mixed formulation of the Poisson problem on curvilinear quadrilateral meshes. The method is hybrid in the sense that the domain is decomposed into multiple disjoint elements and the interelement continuity is enforced using a Lagrange multiplier. The method is mimetic in the sense that the discrete divergence operator is exact. By using the mimetic basis functions and their dual representations, various metric-free discrete terms are obtained. The discrete system can be efficiently solved by first solving a reduced system for the Lagrange multiplier. Numerical experiments which validate the method are presented.Aerodynamic

    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

    Discontinuous modelling of strain localisation and failure

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    The computational simulation of failure in solids poses many challenges. A proper understanding of how structures respond under loading, both before and past the peak load, is important for safe and economical constructions. This requires numerical models for failure which are both faithful to the physical reality and mathematically well founded. A serious computational issue is that of objectivity with respect to the spatial discretisation of a problem. This requires that upon refinement of the spatial discretisation of a problem, a unique, physically meaningful result is approached. One approach to ensure objectivity with respect to spatial discretisation when simulating failure in solids is to allow displacement discontinuities in the solution. In this work, different techniques, of varying complexity, are developed to simulate displacement discontinuities which are independent of the spatial discretisation using finite elements. The different techniques are then critically evaluated. The first model examined involves adding only the effect of a displacement discontinuity to a finite element as an incompatible strain mode. This allows a traction–separation relationship to be applied at an interface and can be implemented simply in a standard finite element code. It is however shown that this type of model can be cast in an equivalent continuum format, a form which is known to be sensitive to the spatial discretisation. The second approach developed involves the addition of the Heaviside function to the underlying finite element interpolation basis. This method is based on the partition of unity concept, and allows the Heaviside function to be added locally to a finite element mesh to simulate a propagating displacement discontinuity. The approach is formulated for geometrically linear, geometrically nonlinear, quasi-static and dynamic problems. It is shown to be completely independent of the spatial discretisation. The partition of unity-based model is used also to simulate failure using a regularised strain softening model. When a critical level of inelastic deformation is reached, a displacement discontinuity is inserted. This model is better suited to modelling the entire failure process than a continuum or discontinuous model alone. Through numerical examples, it is shown that the inclusion of a displacement discontinuity during the failure process can lead to a different failure mode than for a continuum-only model

    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
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