Gas turbines are used to convert thermal energy into mechanical energy. The thermal efficiency of the gas turbine is directly related to the turbine inlet temperature. The combustion and turbine technology has improved to such an extent that the operating temperature in the turbine inlet is higher than the melting temperature of the turbine material. Different techniques are used to cope with this problem. One of the most commonly used methods is internal cooling of the turbine blades. Conventionally air from the compressor is used for this purpose but due to higher heat capacity, steam can be used as coolant. This opens up the possibility to increase the gas temperature. In the case of a combined cycle power plant, its availability provides a good opportunity to be used as a coolant. The trailing edge of the gas turbine blades is an important region as it affects the aerodynamics of the flow. The aerodynamics demands a sharp and thin trailing edge to reduce profile losses. The conventional method is the release of a lot of cooling air though a slot along the airfoil trailing edge. However in the case of internal only cooling designs, the coolant is not allowed to leave the channel except from the root section to avoid mixing of the gas in the main flow path with the coolant and loss of cooling medium. The challenge is to design an inner cooling channel, with the cooling medium entering and leaving the blade at the root section, which reduces the metal temperatures to the required values without an increase of the profile losses and at acceptable cooling flow rate and pressure drop. This thesis presents Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) based numerical work concentrated firstly on the flow and heat transfer in two-pass rectangular channels with and without turbulator ribs. The aspect ratio of the inlet pass was reduced to accommodate more channels in the blade profile in chord-wise direction. Additionally, the divider-to-tip wall distance was varied for these channels. Their effect on heat transfer and pressure drop was studied for smooth as well as ribbed channels.  It was followed by a numerical heat transfer study in the trapezoidal channel. Different RANS based turbulence models were used to compare the numerical results with the experimental results. Further, new designs to enhance heat transfer in the channel’s side walls (named as trailing edge wall) were studied. These include the provision of ribs at the trailing edge wall only, inline arrangement of ribs at the bottom as well as at the trailing edge wall and a staggered arrangement of these ribs. The final study was a conjugate heat transfer problem with an aim to propose the best internal cooling channel design to reduce the metal temperature of the trailing edge surface for the given thermal and flow conditions. A number of different options were studied and changes were made to get the best possible channel design. The results show that for a two-pass rectangular channel (both smooth and ribbed), the reduction in inlet channel aspect ratio reduces the pressure drop. For a smooth channel the reduction in the width of the inlet pass does not affect the heat transfer enhancement at the inlet pass and outlet pass regions. In case of ribbed channels, heat transfer decreases at the tip and bend bottom with decrease in the width of the inlet pass. Among different turbulence models used to validate numerical results against experimental results for case of trapezoidal channel, the low-Re k-epsilon model is found to be the most appropriate. Using the turbulence model that yields results that are closest to the experimental data, the staggered arrangement of ribs at the trailing edge wall is found to have maximum thermal performance. The results from the conjugate heat transfer problem suggest using steam as coolant if it is available as it requires less mass flow rate to get similar wall temperature values as compared to air at similar thermal and flow conditions. It is also found that staggered arrangement of ribs is the best option compared to others to enhance heat transfer in trailing edge of the gas turbine blade with the pressure drop in the cooling duct in the acceptable range. / Gasturbiner används för att omvandla värmeenergi till mekanisk energi. Den termiska verkningsgraden för en gasturbin är direkt relaterad till turbinen inloppstemperatur. Förbrännings- och turbintekniken har förbättrats så mycket att gastemperaturen i turbininloppet är högre än smälttemperaturen för turbinmaterialet. Olika tekniker används för att hantera detta problem. En av de vanligaste metoderna är intern kylningen av turbinbladen. Konventionellt luft från kompressorn används för detta ändamål, men på grund av högre värmekapacitet kan ånga användas som kylmedel. Detta öppnar för möjligheten att höja gasens temperatur. Vid ett kombikraftverk, ger dess tillgänglighet ett bra tillfälle att användas som kylmedel.   Den bakre delen av turbinbladen är ett viktigt område eftersom geometrin påverkar strömningen. Aerodynamiken kräver en skarp och tunn bakkant för att minska profilförlusterna. Den konventionella metoden för kylning av denna är att släppa ut en stor mängd kylluft genom en spalt längs bakkanten. Men i fallet med enbart inre kylning får kylmediet inte lämna skovelprofilen i strömningskanalen utan endast genom rotsektionen för att undvika blandning av förbränningsluften i turbinens strömningskanal med kylmediet och förlust av kylmedium.   Utmaningen är att utforma en inre kylkanal, i vilken kylmediet kommer in och lämnar bladet i rotsnittet som är tillräckligt bra för att hålla metalltemperaturen på normala värden utan att öka profilförlusterna och med acceptabla kylluftflöden och tryckfall.   Denna avhandling består av ett Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) baserat numeriskt arbetet koncentrerat på strömning och värmeöverföring först i två-pass rektangulära kanaler med och utan turbulensalstrande ribbor. Geometrin för inloppspassagen reducerades för att ge utrymme för fler kylkanaler inom bladets profil i kordans riktning. Dessutom varierades mellanväggens avstånd till toppväggen. Effekten på värmeöverföring och tryckfall studerades för båda kanalerna. Därefter följde en numerisk studie av värmeöverföringen i liknande men trapetsformade kanaler. Olika RANS baserade turbulensmodeller användes för att jämföra numeriska och experimentella resultat. Vidare har nya konstruktioner för att förbättra värmeöverföringen i kanalens sidoväggar och bakkant studeras. Dessa inkluderar turbulensribbor på enbart bakkantsväggen samt ribbor på såväl sidoväggar som på bakkantsväggen i linje med och förskjutna mot varandra. Den slutliga studien var ett sammansatt värmeöverföringsproblem bakkantens yta för ett visst angivet tillstånd i form av värmebelastning, tryck, temperatur och flöden. Ett antal olika alternativ har studerats och modifierats för att bästa möjliga kanalutformningen.   Resultaten visar att för en två-pass rektangulär kanal (både släta och ribbade), minskar tryckfallet när inloppskanalens geometri reducerades. För en slät kanal påverkar inte den minskade bredden på inloppskanalen värmeöverförning i inlopps- och utloppskanalerna. Vid ribbade kanaler minskar värmeöverföring vid toppen och på toppväggen med minskad bredd på inloppskanalen. Av de olika turbulensmodeller som används för att validera numeriska resultat mot experimentella för fallet med trapetsformad kanal visade sig låg-Re k-epsilon modellen den mest lämpliga. Genom att använda den turbulensmodell som är närmast experimentella data visar det att geometrin med förskjutna ribbor på bakkantsväggen har maximal termiska prestanda. Resultaten från det sammansatta värmeöverföringsproblemet framhåller användning av ånga som kylmedium om den finns tillgänglig eftersom den kräver mindre massflöde för att få samma värden på väggtemperaturerna jämfört med luft vid samma termiska tillstånd. Det kunde också visas att förskjutna turbulensribbor är det bästa alternativet jämfört med andra för att öka värmeöverföringen i bakkanten av ett gasturbinblad med acceptabelt tryckfall i kylkanalen. / QC 20111108

Extensive research has been conducted in the area of journal bearings over many years for various operating conditions and geometry, effects of different types of lubricants (oil and water), different numbers (zero, one and three) and positions of grooves and the flow of lubricant between the shaft and bearing. One area of research has been developing methods to minimize the experimental time and cost of predicting the performance of journal bearings operating over a wide variety of conditions. This has led to numerical methods being developed and utilised for this purpose. Numerical methods are an important foundation for the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). CFD method has proved to be a very useful tool in this research field. This project uses a CFD (specifically FLUENT) approach to simulate the fluid flow in a water lubricated journal bearing with equal spaced axial grooves. Water is fed into the bearing from one end. The lubricant is subjected to a velocity induced flow, as the shaft rotates and a pressure induced flow, as the water is pumped from one end of the bearing to the other. CFD software is used to simulate the fluid flow phenomenon that occurs during the process. Different parameters such as eccentricity ratio, number of grooves and groove orientation to the load line were examined. Lubricant pressure and velocity profiles were obtained and compared with available theoretical and experimental results. Two dimensional studies showed that the predicted maximum pressure and load carrying capacity from CFD were similar to the results from theoretical calculations. A small percentage difference (1.78% - 3.76%) between experimental and theoretical results was found. The pressure distribution in the lubricant shows that grooves decrease the pressure and load carrying capacity of the bearing. Swirl or turbulence does occur in the groove is affected by the viscosity of the lubricant. Three dimensional studies show that the pressure drops linearly from one end of the bearing to the other for no groove, concentric and three grooves cases. As the eccentricity increases, for one groove cases, the shape of the pressure profile changes to parabolic shape at positive region while the other pressure profiles drop linearly. The magnitude of the velocity it the bearing gap increased from 0.8 m/s to about 2.9 m/s when the shaft speed increased from zero to 5.5 m/s for a concentric and no groove case, similar changes were noted for all other cases. An interesting observation occurs when implementing the pressure profiles along the bearing. At cases such as zero and one groove condition and e = 0.4 and 0.6, lubricant flow back is observed at both inlet and outlet i.e. at certain area of the inlet, lubricant flowed out of the bearing against the supply pressure, a similar situation occurred at the exit of the bearing.

The human upper airway structure provides access of ambient air to the lower respiratory tract, and it as an efficient filter to cleanse inspired air of dust bacteria, and other environmental pollutants. When air passes through airway passages, it constantly changes direction, which may lead to flow separation, recirculation, secondary flow and shear stress variations along the airway surface. Therefore, it is essential to understanding the air transport processes within the upper airway system. The functions are respiratory defence mechanisms that protecting the delicate tissues of the lower airway from the often harsh conditions of the ambient air. While protecting the lower respiratory system, however, the upper airway itself becomes susceptible to various lesions and infections from filtration of environmental pollutants. Inhaled particle pollutants have been implicated as a potential cause of respiratory diseases. In contrast, inhalation of drug particles de posited directly to the lung periphery results in rapid absorption across bronchopulmonary mucosal membranes and reduction of the adverse reactions in the therapy of asthma and other respiratory disorders. For this purpose, it is desirable that the particles should not deposit in the upper airways before reaching the lung periphery. Therefore, accurate prediction of local and regional pattern of inhaled particle deposition in the human upper airway should provide useful information to clinical researchers in assessing the pathogenic potential and possibly lead to innovation in inhalation therapies. With the development of the increasing computer power and advancement of modeling software, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique to study dilute gas-particle flow problems is gradually becoming an attractive investigative tool. This research will provide a more complete picture of the detailed physical processes within the human upper airway system. Owing to the significant advancements in computer technologies, it will allow us to efficiently construct a full-scaled model integrating the various functional biological elements including the nasal, oral, laryngeal and more generations of the bifurcation of the human upper airway system through imagining methodologies. A significant advantage of this human model is that the differences in airway morphology and ventilation parameters that exist between healthy and diseased airways, and other factors, can be accommodated. This model will provide extensive experimental and numerical studies to probe significant insights to the particle deposition characte ristics within the complex airway passages and better understanding of any important phenomena associated with the fluid-particle flow. It will also lead to an improved understanding of fluid/particle transport under realistic physiological conditions. New concepts and numerical models to capture the main features observed in the experimental program and innovative techniques will be formulated. The ability to numerically model and a better physical understanding of the complex phenomena associated with the fluid dynamics and biological processes will be one of the major medical contributions especially targeting drug delivery and health risk analysis. Its biomedical engineering significance lies in the fact that this will enable us to accurately evaluate potential biological effects by the inhaled drug particles, facilitating new drug research and development.

In hybrid RANS/LES, Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations method is used to treat the near-wall region and large-eddy simulation (LES) is applied to the core turbulent region. Owing to the incompatibility of these two numerical modelling approaches, an artificial (i.e., non-physical) buffer layer forms along the interface where the model switches from RANS to LES. In this thesis, a novel dynamic forcing scheme incorporating backscatter is proposed in order to remove the artificial buffer layer. In contrast to previous forcing techniques, the proposed forcing is determined dynamically from the flow field itself, and does not require any extraction of turbulent fields from reference direct numerical simulation (DNS) or high-resolution LES databases. The proposed forcing model has been tested on three types of wall-bounded turbulent flows, namely, turbulent flow in a plane channel; turbulent flow in a spanwise rotating channel; and turbulent flow in a spanwise rotating rib-roughened channel. In order to validate the present hybrid approach, turbulence statistics obtained from hybrid RANS/LES simulations are thoroughly compared with the available DNS results and laboratory measurement data. Based on the study of a plane channel flow, transport equations for the resolved turbulent stresses and kinetic energy are introduced to investigate the effects of dynamic forcing on reduction of the thickness and impact of the artificial buffer layer. As long as the dynamic forcing is in use, the artificial buffer layer have been successfully removed, indicating that the proposed hybrid approach is insensitive to the choices of the forcing region or interface location. The predictive performance of the dynamic forcing scheme has been further evaluated by considering turbulent flows subjected to a special type of body force, i.e., the non-inertial and non-conservative Coriolis force. Due to the effects of system rotation, turbulence level is enhanced on the pressure side and suppressed on the suction side of the rotating channel. Furthermore, it is reported in this thesis that the classification of the roughness type now relies not only on the pitch ratio, but also on the rotation number in the context of rotating rib-roughened flows. / February 2016

Modern helicopters, civilian and military alike, are expected to operate in all weather conditions. Ice accretion adversely affects the availability, affordability, safety and survivability. Availability of the vehicle may be compromised if the ice formation requires excessive torque to overcome the drag needed to operate the rotor. Affordability is affected by the power requirements and cost of ownership of the deicing systems needed to safely operate the vehicle. Equipment of the rotor blades with built-in heaters greatly increases the cost of the helicopter and places further demands on the engine. The safety of the vehicle is also compromised due to ice shedding events, and the onset of abrupt, unexpected stall phenomena attributable to ice formation. Given the importance of understanding the effects of icing on aircraft performance and certification, considerable work has been done on the development of analytical and empirical tools, accompanied by high quality wind tunnel and flight test data. In this work, numerical studies to improve ice growth modeling have been done by reducing limitations and empiricism inherent in existing ice accretion models. In order to overcome the weakness of Lagrangian approach in unsteady problem such as rotating blades, a water droplet solver based on 3-D Eulerian method is developed and integrated into existing CFD solver. Also, the differences between the industry standard ice accretion analyses such as LEWICE and the ice accretion models based on the extended Messinger model are investigated through a number of 2-D airfoil and 3-D rotor blade ice accretion studies. The developed ice accretion module based on 3-D Eulerian water droplet method and the extended Messinger model is also coupled with an existing empirical ice shedding model. A series of progressively challenging simulations have been carried out. These include ability of the solvers to model airloads over an airfoil with a prescribed/simulated ice shape, collection efficiency modeling, ice growth, ice shedding, de-icing modeling, and assessment of the degradation of airfoil or rotor performance associated with the ice formation. While these numerical simulation results are encouraging, much additional work remains in modeling detailed physics important to rotorcraft icing phenomena. Despite these difficulties, progress in assessing helicopter ice accretion has been made and tools for initial analyses have been developed.Modern helicopters, civilian and military alike, are expected to operate in all weather conditions. Ice accretion adversely affects the availability, affordability, safety and survivability. Availability of the vehicle may be compromised if the ice formation requires excessive torque to overcome the drag needed to operate the rotor. Affordability is affected by the power requirements and cost of ownership of the deicing systems needed to safely operate the vehicle. Equipment of the rotor blades with built-in heaters greatly increases the cost of the helicopter and places further demands on the engine. The safety of the vehicle is also compromised due to ice shedding events, and the onset of abrupt, unexpected stall phenomena attributable to ice formation. Given the importance of understanding the effects of icing on aircraft performance and certification, considerable work has been done on the development of analytical and empirical tools, accompanied by high quality wind tunnel and flight test data. In this work, numerical studies to improve ice growth modeling have been done by reducing limitations and empiricism inherent in existing ice accretion models. In order to overcome the weakness of Lagrangian approach in unsteady problem such as rotating blades, a water droplet solver based on 3-D Eulerian method is developed and integrated into existing CFD solver. Also, the differences between the industry standard ice accretion analyses such as LEWICE and the ice accretion models based on the extended Messinger model are investigated through a number of 2-D airfoil and 3-D rotor blade ice accretion studies. The developed ice accretion module based on 3-D Eulerian water droplet method and the extended Messinger model is also coupled with an existing empirical ice shedding model. A series of progressively challenging simulations have been carried out. These include ability of the solvers to model airloads over an airfoil with a prescribed/simulated ice shape, collection efficiency modeling, ice growth, ice shedding, de-icing modeling, and assessment of the degradation of airfoil or rotor performance associated with the ice formation. While these numerical simulation results are encouraging, much additional work remains in modeling detailed physics important to rotorcraft icing phenomena. Despite these difficulties, progress in assessing helicopter ice accretion has been made and tools for initial analyses have been developed.

The transport of multi-phase flow in pipelines can be met in a wide range of industrial applications, including the oil and gas industry, showing great savings in developments. In addition, as the exploration of new fields in oil and gas expands to harsh environments, such as ocean or polar, the multi-phase flow transport sometimes becomes the only feasible option. The important features of such multi-phase flow applications include flow regimes, pressure drop and liquid holdup. The precise estimation of these parameters has significant technical and economical impacts on the design and operation of an oil and gas pipelines. Many prediction correlations and methods have been developed; computational fluid dynamics (CFD) being one of them. This type of modelling approach has many advantages over the conventional approaches such as its ability to solve 3D transient problems; offering access to a wealth of information which with conventional techniques is extremely difficult to obtain. Therefore, interest in applying CFD for multi-phase flow transport in pipelines has been on the rise. This thesis is aimed at presenting CFD simulations based on the use of the Volume of Fluid model (VOF) approach for various conditions of gas-liquid turbulent flow in a horizontal circular pipe. In the current VOF formulation in addition to the secondary phase transport equation, a geometric reconstruction technique based on a piecewise-linear interface construction approach is used for reconstructing the interface. A number of multi-phase studies using different turbulence models to the current one have recently appeared in the open literature for simple flow geometries such as rectangular channels. However, most of them assume specific boundary conditions (such as fully-separated phases for stratified flows, the use of square wave at the inlet to represent slug flow or imposing an interfacial disturbance to initiate slugging). These require case-by-case empirical information such as, interfacial roughness for stratified- or slug frequency for intermittent-flow. However, most of them have not presented any detailed validation of their results. The former two points are very crucial for the design of transport pipelines as a pre-knowledge of the operative flow regime and empirical information are not available at the design stage. The predictive accuracy of the present simulations is tested against most common mechanistic approaches and detailed measurements of stratified two-phase flow in a horizontal pipe of Strand (1993) and have been found to be in reasonable quantitative agreement. For the intermittent flow type cases, the numerical results are qualitatively compared against experiments in a horizontal pipe of Al-alweet (2008). The computed flow data of intermittent flow type are further tested against some empirical and mechanistic correlations; the numerical results are qualitatively in a reasonable agreement. Gas compressibility effects on the simulations of slug flow are also explored and are found to bring about some positive benefit. Overall, the predictive accuracy of the present approach is reasonable and promising, demonstrating the ability of the model to predict different types of flow regimes found in two-phase pipe flows. Furthermore, the proposed model shows potential for general applicability to the design of two-phase pipeline systems as it does not require pre-knowledge of the flow regime or any case-by-case empirical information.

Any natural surface is in essence non-smooth, consisting of more or less regular roughness and/or mobile structures of different scales. From a fluid mechanics point of view, these natural surfaces offer better aerodynamic performances when they cover moving bodies, in terms of drag reduction, lift enhancement or control of boundary layer separation; this has been shown for boundary layer or wake flows around thick bodies. The numerical simulation of microscopic flows around "natural" surfaces is still out of reach today. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to study the modeling of the apparent flow slip occurring on this kind of surfaces, modeled as a porous medium, applying Whitaker's volume averaging theory. This mathematical model makes it possible to capture details of the microstructure while preserving a satisfactory description of the physical phenomena which occur. The first chapter of this manuscript provides an overview of previous efforts to model these surfaces, detailing the most important results from the literature. The second chapter presents the mathematical derivation of the volume-averaged Navier-Stokes equations (VANS) in a porous medium. In the third chapter the flow stability at the interface between a free fluid and a porous medium, formed by a series of rigid cylinders, is studied. The presence of this porous layer is treated by including a drag term in the fluid equations. It is shown that the presence of this term reduces the rates of amplification of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability over the whole range of wavenumbers, thus leading to an increase of the wavelength of the most amplified mode. In this same context, the difference between the isotropic model and a tensorial approach for the drag term has been evaluated, to determine the most consistent approach to study these flow instabilities. This has led to the conclusion that the model that uses the apparent permeability tensor is the most relevant one. In the following chapter, based on this last result, the apparent permeability tensor, based on over one hundred direct numerical simulations carried out over microscopic unit cells, has been identified for a three-dimensional porous medium consisting of rigid cylinders. In these configurations the tensor varies according to four parameters: the Reynolds number, the porosity and the direction of the average pressure gradient, defined by two Euler angles. This parameterization makes it possible to capture local three-dimensional effects. This database has been set up to create, based on a kriging-type approach, a behavioral metamodel for estimating all the components of the apparent permeability tensor. In the fifth chapter, simulations of the VANS equations are carried out on a macroscopic scale after the implementation of the metamodel, to get reasonable computing times. The validation of the macroscopic approach is performed on a closed cavity flow covered with a porous layer and a comparison with the results of a very accurate DNS, homogenized a posteriori, has shown a very good agreement and has demonstrated the relevance of the approach. The next step has been the study of the passive control of the separation of the flow past a hump which is placed on a porous wall, by the same macroscopic VANS approach. Finally, general conclusions and possible directions of research in the field are presented in the last chapter.

This thesis discusses the importance of tidal turbine support structures through analytical and computational modelling. A head-driven analytical channel model was first developed to determine the sensitivity of the flow to the presence and type of support structures. It showed that there was a significant potential reduction in farm power output even when only considering approximate force coefficients for rotor and support structure. To confirm these findings, computational simulations were performed on a full-scale turbine to obtain more accurate force coefficients considering full rotor-support structure interactions. The flow interaction effects between the rotor and its support structure were studied using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for different support structure shapes for a range of tidal velocities including the power-capping zone. The integrated rotor force coefficients were higher in the presence of the cylindrical support structure than the elliptical support due to the higher opposing thrust from the cylinder in the channel redirecting the flow and increasing the flow velocity over the top half of the rotor. The presence of rotor caused a drop in the stream-wise forces on the support structure. The amplitude of the stream-wise sectional forces along the support structure height was lower in the case of an elliptical than a circular cylinder due to more streamlined shape of the ellipse. At device scale, the computational model was used to study the turbine performance in the power-capping zone by pitching the blades to feather. The influence of pitch-to- feather power-capping strategy was examined by studying the forces and angle of attack on the turbine blades, and the wake at three different blade pitch angles. Increasing blade pitch angle resulted in a significant drop in the average load on the blade. Also since the tidal channel flow has a shear in its velocity profile, the influence of shear on turbine performance was studied by comparing it to the same turbine in a uniform flow. The analytical channel flow model was used to investigate the characteristics of tidal stream energy extraction for large tidal farms deployed in tidal channels with specific focus on the limitations to realizable farm power due to turbine support structure drag and constraints on volume flow rate reduction. The force coefficients dataset from computational modelling was used to obtain a better estimate of the farm power output. Support structures were seen to contribute significantly to the overall resistive force in the channel and thus reduce the overall flow rates in the channel, leading to losses in realizable power. Over a wide range of channel characteristics, realistic levels of support structure drag lead to up to a 10% reduction in realizable power, and an associated reduction in the number of turbines that can be economically installed.

Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) and climate models parametrize the effects of boundary-layer turbulence as a diffusive process, dependent on a diffusion coefficient, which appears as nonlinear terms in the governing equations. In the advection dominated zone of the boundary layer and in the free atmosphere, the air flow supports different wave motions, with the fastest being the sound waves. Time integrations of these terms, in both zones, need to be implicit otherwise they impractically restrict the stable time step sizes. At the same time, implicit schemes may lose accuracy compared to explicit schemes in the same level, which is due to dispersion error associated with these schemes. Furthermore, the implicit schemes need iterative approaches like the Newton-Raphson method. Therefore, the combination of implicit and explicit methods, called IMEX or semi-implicit, has extensively attracted attention. In the combined method, the linear part of the equation as well as the fast wave terms are treated by the implicit part and the rest is calculated by the explicit scheme. Meanwhile, minimizing the dissipation and dispersion errors can enhance the performance of time integration schemes, since the stability and accuracy will be restricted by these inevitable errors. Hence, the target of this thesis is to increase the stability range, while obtaining accurate solutions by using IMEX and semi-implicit time integration methods. Therefore, a comprehensive effort has been made toward minimizing the numerical errors to develop new Runge-Kutta schemes, in IMEX and semi-implicit forms, to temporally integrate the governing equations in the atmospheric field so that the stability is extended and accuracy is improved, compared to the previous schemes. At the first step, the A-stability and the Strong Stability Preserving (SSP) optimized properties were compared as two essential properties of the time integration schemes. It was shown that both properties attempt to minimize the dissipation and dispersion errors, but in two different aspects. The SSP optimized property focuses on minimizing the errors to increase the accuracy limits, while the A-stability property tries to extend the range of stability. It was shown that the combination of both properties is essential in the field of interest. Moreover, the A-stability property was found as an essential property to accelerate the steady state solutions. Afterward, the dissipation and dispersion errors, generated by three-stage second order IMEX Runge-Kutta scheme were minimized, while the proposed scheme, so called IMEX-SSP2(2,3,2) enjoys the A-stability and SSP properties. A practical governing equation set in the atmospheric field, so called compressible Boussinesq equations set, was calculated using the new IMEX scheme and the results were compared to one well-known IMEX scheme in the literature, i.e. ARK2(2,3,2), which is an abbreviation of Additive Runge-Kutta. Note that, the ARK2(2,3,2) was compared to various types of IMEX Runge-Kutta schemes and it was found as the more efficient scheme in the atmospheric fields (Weller et al., 2013). It was shown that the IMEX-SSP2(2,3,2) could improve the accuracy and extend the range of stable time step sizes as well. Through the van der Pol test case, it was shown that the ARK2(2,3,2) with L-stability property may decline to the first order in the calculation of stiff limit, while IMEX-SSP2(2,3,2), with A-stability property, is able to retain the assigned second order of accuracy. Therefore, it was concluded that the L-stability property, due to restrictive conditions associated with, may weaken the time integration’s performance, compared to the A-stability property. The ability of the IMEX-SSP2(2,3,2) was proved in solving different case, which is the inviscid Burger equation in spherical coordinate system by using a realistic initial condition dataset. In the next step, it was attempted to maximize the non-negativity property associated with the numerical stability function of three-stage third order Diagonally Implicit Runge-Kutta (DIRK) schemes. It was shown that the non-negativity has direct relation with non-oscillatory behaviors. Two new DIRK schemes with A- and L-stability properties, respectively, were developed and compared to the SSP(3,3), which obtains the SSP optimized property in the same class of DIRK schemes. The SSP optimized property was found to be more beneficial for the inviscid (advection dominated) flows, since in the von Neumann stability analysis, the SSP optimized property provides more nonnegative region for the imaginary component of the stability function. However, in most practical cases, i.e. the viscous (advection diffusion) flows, the nonnegative property is needed for both real and imaginary components of the stability function. Therefore, the SSP optimized property, individually, is not helpful, unless mixed with the A-stability property. Meanwhile, the A- and L-stability properties were compared as well. The intention is to find how these properties influence the DIRK schemes’ performances. The A-stability property was found as preserving the SSP property more than the L-stability property. Moreover, the proposed A-stable scheme tolerates larger Courant Friedrichs Lewy (CFL) number, while preserving the accuracy and non-oscillatory computations. This fact was proved in calculating different test cases, including compressible Euler and nonlinear viscous Burger equations. Finally, the time integration of the boundary layer flows was investigated as well. The nonlinearity associated with the diffusion coefficient makes the implicit scheme impractical, while the explicit scheme inefficiently limits the stable time step sizes. By using the DIRK scheme, a new semi-implicit approach was proposed, in which the diffusion coefficient at each internal stage is calculated by a weight-averaged combination of the solutions at current internal stage and previous time step, in which the time integration can benefit from both explicit and implicit advantages. As shown, the accuracy was improved, which is due to engaging the explicit solutions and the stability was extended due to taking advantages of implicit scheme. It was found that the nominated semi-implicit method results in less dissipation error, more accurate solutions and less CPU time usage, compared to the implicit schemes, and it enjoys larger range of stable time steps than other semi-implicit approaches in the literature.

Although the terms "Human Thermal Comfort" and "Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)" can be highly subjective, they still dictate the indoor climate design (HVAC design) of a building. In order to evaluate human thermal comfort and IAQ, one of three main tools are used, a) direct questioning the subjects about their thermal and air quality sensation (voting, sampling etc.), b) measuring the human thermal comfort by recording the physical parameters such as relative humidity, air and radiation temperature, air velocities and concentration gradients of pollutants or c) by using numerical simulations either including or excluding detailed thermo-physiological models. The application of the first two approaches can only take place in post commissioning and/or testing phases of the building. Use of numerical techniques can however be employed at any stage of the building design. With the rapid development in computational hard- and software technology, the costs involved in numerical studies has reduced compared to detailed tests. Employing numerical modelling to investigate human thermal comfort and IAQ however demand thorough verification and validation studies. Such studies are used to understand the limitations and application of numerical modelling of human thermal comfort and IAQ in indoor climates. This PhD research is an endeavour to verify, validate and apply, numerical simulation for modelling heat transfer and respiration of occupants in indoor climates. Along with the investigations concerning convective and radiation heat transfer between the occupants and their surroundings, the work focuses on detailed respiration modelling of sedentary human occupants. The objectives of the work have been to: verify the convective and radiation numerical models; validate them for buoyancy-driven flows due to human occupants in indoor climates; and apply these validated models for investigating human thermal comfort and IAQ in a real classroom for which field study data was available. On the basis of the detailed verification, validation and application studies, the findings are summarized as a set of guidelines for simulating human thermal comfort and IAQ in indoor climates. This PhD research involves the use of detailed human body geometries and postures. Modelling radiation and investigating the effect of geometrical posture has shown that the effective radiation area varies significantly with posture. The simulation results have shown that by using an effective radiation area factor of 0.725, estimated previously (Fanger, 1972) for a standing person, can lead to an underestimation of effective radiation area by 13% for the postures considered. Numerical modelling of convective heat transfer and respiration processes for sedentary manikins have shown that the SST turbulence model (Menter, 1994) with appropriate resolution of near wall region can simulate the local air velocity, temperature and heat transfer coefficients to a level of detail required for prediction of thermal comfort and IAQ. The present PhD work has shown that in a convection dominated environment, the detailed seated manikins give rise to an asymmetrical thermal plume as compared to the thermal plumes generated by simplified manikins or point sources. Validated simulation results obtained during the present PhD work have shown that simplified manikins can be used without significant limitations while investigating IAQ of complete indoor spaces. The use of simplified manikins however does not seem appropriate when simulating detailed respiration effects in the immediate vicinity of seated humans because of the underestimation in the amount of re-inhaled CO2 and pollutants from the surroundings. Furthermore, the results have shown that due to the simplification in geometrical form of the nostrils, the CO2 concentration is much higher near the face region (direct jet along the nostrils) as compared to a detailed geometry (sideways jet). Simulating the complete respiration cycle has shown that a pause between exhalation and inhalation has a significant effect on the amount of re-inhaled CO2. Previous results have shown the amount of re-inhaled CO2 to range between 10 - 19%. The present study has shown that by considering the pause, this amount of re-inhaled CO2 falls down to values lower than 1%. A comparison between the simplified and detailed geometry has shown that a simplified geometry can cause an underestimation in the amount of re-inhaled CO2 by more than 37% as compared to a detailed geometry. The major contribution to knowledge delivered by this PhD work is the provision of a validated seated computational thermal manikin. This PhD work follows a structured verification and validation approach for conducting CFD simulations to predict human thermal comfort and indoor air quality. The work demonstrates the application of the validated model to a classroom case with multiple occupancy and compares the measured results with the simulation results. The comparison of CFD results with measured data advocates the use of CFD and visualizes the importance of modelling thermal manikins in indoor HVAC design rather than designing the HVAC by considering empty spaces as the occupancy has a strong influence on the indoor air flow. This PhD work enables the indoor climate researchers and building designers to employ simplified thermal manikin to correctly predict the mean flow characteristics in indoor surroundings. The present work clearly demonstrates the limitation of the PIV measurement technique, the importance of using detailed CFD manikin geometry when investigating the phenomena of respiration in detail and the effect of thermal plume around the seated manikin. This computational thermal manikin used in this work is valid for a seated adult female geometry.