A normal aortic valve has three leaflets; however, 1- 2% of children are born with an aortic valve with two leaflets, referred to as congenital bicuspid aortic valves (BAV). Recent in vivo studies have shown that flow development past the bicuspid valves into the ascending aorta is markedly different from that past the normal tri-leaflet aortic valve. This difference may lead to the bicuspid valve having a higher rate of ascending aortic root dissection, a pathology that can potentially result in fatality. Using computational fluid dynamics we aim to evaluate the alterations in flow development in the ascending aorta with BAV compared to healthy tri-leaflet valves (TAV) and relate the alterations in flow-induced stresses with higher incidences of aortic dissection in patients with BAV. Simplified models based on the geometry and dimensions from published literature were developed. The preliminary results show that there is a difference in flow development between the BAV and the tri-leaflet valve. This is visible by the differences in wall shear stress and dynamic pressure distribution in the ascending aorta. The conclusion drawn from this is that there are marked differences in the ascending aortic flow development with BAV compared to that with TAV which may lead to dissection of the aortic arch.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed in order to compare the solutions of oscillating wings with Prandtl’s lifting-line theory. Quasi-steady and steady-periodic simulations were completed using the CFD software Star-CCM+. The simulations were performed for a number of frequencies in a pure plunging setup. Additional simulations were then completed using a setup of combined pitching and plunging at multiple frequencies. Results from the CFD simulations were compared to the quasi-steady lifting-line solution in the form of the axial-force, normal-force, power, and thrust coefficients, as well as the efficiency obtained for each simulation. The mean values were evaluated for each simulation and compared to the quasi-steady lifting-line solution. It was found that as the frequency of oscillation increased, the quasi-steady lifting-line solution was decreasingly accurate in predicting solutions.

This work made publicly available electronically on May 9, 2012.

Health care facilities, offices, as well as workshops and other commercial occupancies, require ventilation and air conditioning for thermal comfort and removal of contaminants and other pollutions. A good design of ventilation and air conditioning provides a healthy and comfortable environment for patients, workers, and visitors. The increasing developments of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in the recent years have opened the possibilities of low-cost yet effective method for improving HVAC systems in design phase, with less experiment required. This work presents numerical simulations of thermal comfort and contaminant removal for two typical working spaces where these factors are critical: a hospital operating room with various configurations of inlet and outlet arrangements, and an office with two cases of air distribution systems: underfloor and overhead, also with alternative cases. The 2-D simulation approach was employed. Temperature, relative humidity, contaminant concentration, thermal sensation, predicted mean vote (PMV), and contaminant removal factor were computed and used for assessing thermal comfort and contaminant removal characteristics of the office room and operating room. The result shows good agreements with experimental data taken from related literature.

Spacecraft in orbit experience temperature swings close to 240 K as the craft passes from the shadow of the Earth into direct sunlight. To regulate the craft’s internal energy, large radiators eject unwanted energy into space using radiation transfer. The amount of radiation emitted is directly related to the topology of the radiator design. Deformable structures such as those made with origami tessellation patterns offer a mechanism to control the quantity of energy being emitted by varying the radiator shape. Three such patterns, the Waterbomb, Huffman Waterbomb, and Huffman Stars-Triangles, can be folded into tubes. Origami tubes offer greater control and simplicity of design than flat radiators. Using FLUENT, Origami Simulator, and Solidworks to first simulate and then analyze the flow of a thermal fluid through the patterns and the radiation emitted from the created bodies, it was determined that the Waterbomb pattern achieved a 17.6 percent difference in emitted radiation, over a 2 percent change in fold. The Huffman Waterbomb pattern displayed a 42.7 percent difference in emitted radiation over a 20 percent change of fold. The simulations demonstrated both the feasibility and benefits of the origami designed tubes.

Mathematical models were developed to understand cavity growth mechanisms, heat and mass transfer in combination with chemical reaction, and the factors which affect gas production from an underground coal gasifier. A model for coal gasification in a one-dimensional spatial domain was developed and validated through comparison with experimental measurements of the pyrolysis of large coal particles and cylindrical coal blocks. The effects of changes in operating conditions and coal properties on cavity growth were quantified. It was found that the operating conditions which have the greatest impact on cavity growth are: temperature, water influx, pressure and gas composition, while the coal properties which have the greatest impact are: the thermo-mechanical behaviour of the coal, the coal composition and the thickness of the ash layer. Comparison of the model results with estimates from field scale trials, indicate that the model predicts growth rates with magnitudes comparable to those observed. Model results with respect to the effect of ash content, water influx and pressure are in agreement with trends observed in field trials. A computational fluid dynamics model for simulating the combined transport phenomena and chemical reaction in an underground coal gasification cavity has been developed. Simulations of a two-dimensional axi-symmetric cavity partially filled with an inert ash bed have shown that when the oxidant is injected from the bottom of the cavity, the fluid flow in the void space is dominated by a single buoyancy force due to temperature gradients established by the combustion of volatiles produced from the gasification of carbon at the cavity walls. Simulations in which the oxidant was injected from the top of the cavity reveal a weak fluid circulation due to the absence of strong buoyancy forces, leading to poor gasification performance. A channel model of gas production from underground coal gasification was developed, which incorporates a zero-dimensional cavity growth model and mass transfer due to natural convection. A model sensitivity study is presented and model simulations elucidate the effects of operating conditions and coal properties on gas production.

A comprehensive understanding of high-speed liquid jets is required for their introduction into engine and combustion applications. Their transient nature, short lifetime, unique characteristics and the inability to take many experimental readings, has inhibited this need. This study investigates the outflow of a high-speed liquid jet into quiescent atmospheric air. The key characteristics present are, a bow shock wave preceding the jet head, an enhanced mixing layer and the transient deformation of the liquid jet core. The outflow regime is studied in an experimental and numerical manner. In the experimental investigation, a high-speed liquid water jet is generated using the momentum exchange by impact method. The jet velocity is supersonic with respect to the impinged gaseous medium. The resulting jet speed is Mach 1.8. The jet is visualised with the use of shadowgraph apparatus. Visualisation takes place over a variety of time steps in the liquid jet???s life span and illustrates the four major development stages. The stages progress from initial rapid core jet expansion to jet stabilisation and characteristic uniform gradient formation. The visualisation shows that at all stages of the jet???s life it is axi-symmetric. One dimensional nozzle analysis and a clean bow shock wave indicate that the pulsing jet phenomenon can be ignored. In the numerical investigation, a time marching finite volume scheme is employed. The bow shock wave characteristics are studied with the use of a blunt body analogy. The jet at a specific time frame is considered a solid body. The jet shape is found to have an important influence on the shock position and shape. Analysis of the results indicates a shock stand-off similar to that seen in experimental observations and the prediction of shock data. The jet life span is modelled using a species dependent density model. The transient calculations reproduce the key jet shape characteristics shown in experimental visualisation. The mushrooming effect and large mixing layer are shown to develop. These effects are strongest when the shock wave transience has yet to stabilise. Quantitative analysis of the mixing layer at varying time steps is presented.

The current work has developed a CFD model to characterise a pseudo-annular photocatalytic bubble column reactor. The model development was divided into three stages. Firstly, hydrodynamic assessment of the multiphase fluid flow in the vessel, which incorporated residence time distribution analysis both numerically and experimentally for validation purposes. Secondly, the radiation distribution of the UV source was completed. The final stage incorporated the kinetics for the degradation the model pollutant, sodium oxalate. The hydrodynamics were modelled using an Eulerian-Eulerian approach to the multiphase system with the standard k- turbulence model. This research established that there was significant deviation in the fluid behaviour in the pseudo-annular reactor when compared with traditional cylindrical columns due to the nature of the internal structure. The residence time distribution study showed almost completely mixed flow in the liquid phase, whereas the gas phase more closely represented plug flow behaviour. Whilst there was significant dependence on the superficial gas flow rate the mixing behaviour demonstrated negligible dependence on the liquid superficial velocity or the liquid flow direction, either co- or counter- current with respect to the gas phase. The light distribution was modelled using a conservative variant of the Discrete Ordinate method. The model examined the contribution to the incident radiation within the reactor of both the gas bubbles and titanium dioxide particles. This work has established the importance of the gas phase in evaluating the light distribution and showed that it should be included when examining the light distribution in a gas-liquid-solid three-phase system. An optimal catalyst loading for the vessel was established to be 1g/L. Integration of the kinetics of sodium oxalate degradation was the final step is developing the complete CFD model. Species transport equations were employed to describe the distribution of pollutant concentration within the vessel. Using a response surface methodology it was shown that the reaction rate exhibited a greater dependency on the lamp power that the lamp length, however, the converse was true with the quantum efficiency. This work highlights the complexity of completely modelling a photocatalytic system and has demonstrated the applicability of CFD for this purpose.

The increasing use of Intelligent Transport System (ITS) can enable very close vehicle spacings which generally results in a net drag reduction for the resulting convoys. The majority of vehicle development has, to date, been for vehicles in isolation, thus the study of interaction effects is becoming increasingly important. The main objective of this research is to investigate the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for understanding convoy aerodynamics and to further the understanding of airflow interaction between vehicles via CFD. In this study, time-averaged characteristics of a simplified, generic passenger vehicle, called the Ahmed car model, after Ahmed et.al (1984) is investigated computationally using the available commercial CFD code, Fluent version 6.1.22. Three different platoon combinations were analysed for the current study which includes a two, three and six model platoons for various rear end configurations of the Ahmed model geometry. Experiments were conducted in RMIT University Industrial Wind Tunnel for analysing the effects of drafting on drag coefficients using two different scales of Ahmed car models. This is an extension to the previous study performed on two 100% scales of Ahmed models (Vino and Watkins, 2004) and the results for both the current and previous experiments were compared using CFD. The CFD proved to be a useful technique since its results compared reasonably well for both the current and the previous experiments on drafting, using Ahmed models of identical (30°) rear slant configurations. However, near critical rear slant angles (~30°) for isolated vehicles some discrepancies were noted. The reasonable validation of experimental results enabled the study to be extended further computationally using CFD, to analyse the effects of inter-vehicle spacing on a platoon of 3 and 6 models for various rear end configurations (between 0° and 40°), in an attempt to provide useful information on vehicle-wake interaction for the Future Generation Intelligent Transport System (FGITS). Critical gaps were identified via CFD for the case of a two, three and six model platoons and the simulations clearly exposed the reasons for these critical gaps. At extremely close proximity, the models experienced more pressure recovery at their rear vertical base, which reduced the drag coefficient. Surprisingly, at some of the close vehicle spacings, the drag coefficients reached values that were higher than that of a vehicle in isolation. This was found due to the high momentum flow impingement to the fore body of the model and was similar to results found in physical experiments. Thus the current CFD analysis revealed that rear slant angle of the model and the inter-vehicle spacing greatly influences the wake structures and ultimately the vehicles aerodynamic drag coefficients in platoons. Even though the current CFD model (Realizable k-B turbulence model) predicted the basic flow structures such as the C-pillar vortices from the rear slant and 2D horse shoe vortices in the model's vertical rear base, the separation bubble on the rear slant that supplies energy to the strong C-pillar vortices was not replicated accurately, which is evidenced from the flow structure analysis. Hence it is recommended for further work, that the study should be extended using the Reynold's stress models or the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) turbulence models for flow structure observation and analysing vortex interactions between the models.

The macroscopic chemistry method for modelling non-equilibrium reacting gas flows with the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is developed and tested. In the macroscopic method, the calculation of chemical reactions is decoupled from the DSMC collision routine. The number of reaction events that must be performed in a cell is calculated with macroscopic rate expressions. These expressions use local macroscopic information such as kinetic temperatures and density. The macroscopic method is applied to a symmetrical diatomic gas. For each dissociation event, a single diatom is selected with a probability based on internal energy and is dissociated into two atoms. For each recombination event, two atoms are selected at random and replaced by a single diatom. To account for the dissociation energy, the thermal energies of all particles in the cell are adjusted. The macroscopic method differs from conventional collision-based DSMC chemistry procedures, where reactions are performed as an integral part of the collision routine. The most important advantage offered by the macroscopic method is that it can utilise reaction rates that are any function of the macroscopic flow conditions. It therefore allows DSMC chemistry calculations to be performed using rate expressions for which no conventional chemistry model may exist. Given the accuracy and flexibility of the macroscopic method, it has significant potential for modelling reacting non-equilibrium gas flows. The macroscopic method is tested by performing DSMC calculations and comparing the results to those obtained using conventional DSMC chemistry models and experimental data. The macroscopic method gives density profiles in good agreement with experimental data in the chemical relaxation region downstream of a strong shock. Within the shock where strongly non-equilibrium conditions prevail, the macroscopic method provides good agreement with a conventional chemistry model. For the flow over a blunt axisymmetric cylinder, which also exhibits strongly non-equilibrium conditions, the macroscopic method also gives reasonable agreement with conventional chemistry models. The ability of the macroscopic method to utilise any rate expression is demonstrated by using a two-temperature rate model that accounts for dissociation-vibration coupling effects that are important in non-equilibrium reacting flows. Relative to the case without dissociation-vibration coupling, the macroscopic method with the two-temperature model gives reduced dissociation rates in vibrationally cold flows, as expected. Also, for the blunt cylinder flow, the two-temperature model gives reduced surface heat fluxes, as expected. The macroscopic method is also tested with a number density dependent form of the equilibrium constant. For zero-dimensional chemical relaxation, the resulting relaxation histories are in good agreement with those provided by an exact Runge-Kutta solution of the relaxation behaviour. Reviews of basic DSMC procedures and conventional DSMC chemistry models are also given. A method for obtaining the variable hard sphere parameters for collisions between particles of different species is given. Borgnakke-Larsen schemes for modelling internal energy exchange are examined in detail. Both continuous rotational and quantised vibrational energy modes are considered. Detailed derivations of viscosity and collision rate expressions for the generalised hard sphere model of Hassan and Hash [Phys. Fluids 5, 738 (1993)] and the modified version of Macrossan and Lilley [J. Thermophys. Heat Transfer 17, 289 (2003)] are also given.