Wave-based models of sound propagation can be used to predict and synthesize sounds as they would be heard naturally in room acoustic environments. The numerical simulation of such models with traditional time-stepping grid-based methods can be an expensive process, due to the sheer size of listening environments (e.g., auditoriums and concert halls) and due to the temporal resolution required by audio rates that resolve frequencies up to the limit of human hearing. Finite difference methods comprise a simple starting point for such simulations, but they are known to suffer from approximation errors that may necessitate expensive grid refinements in order to achieve sufficient levels of accuracy. As such, a significant amount of research has gone into designing finite difference methods that are highly accurate while remaining computationally efficient. The problem of designing and using accurate finite difference schemes is compounded by the fact that room acoustics models require complex boundary conditions to model frequency-dependent wall impedances over non-trivial geometries. The implementation of such boundary conditions in a numerically stable manner has been a challenge for some time. Stable boundary conditions for finite difference room acoustics simulations have been formulated in the past, but generally they have only been useful in modelling trivial geometries (e.g., idealised shoebox halls). Finite volume methods have recently been shown to be a viable solution to the problem of complex boundary conditions over non-trivial geometries, and they also allow for the use of energy methods for numerical stability analyses. Finite volume methods lend themselves naturally to fully unstructured grids and they can simplify to the types of grids typically used in finite difference methods. This allows for room acoustics simulation models that balance the simplicity of finite difference methods for wave propagation in air with the detail of finite volume methods for the modelling of complex boundaries. This thesis is an exploration of these two distinct, yet related, approaches to wave-based room acoustic simulations. The overarching theme in this investigation is the balance between accuracy, computational efficiency, and numerical stability. Higher-order and optimised schemes in two and three spatial dimensions are derived and compared, towards the goal of finding accurate and efficient finite difference schemes. Numerical stability is analysed using frequency-domain analyses, as well as energy techniques whenever possible, allowing for stable and frequency-dependent boundary conditions appropriate for room acoustics modelling. Along the way, the use of non-Cartesian grids is investigated, geometric relationships between certain finite difference and finite volume schemes are explored, and some problems associated to staircasing effects at boundaries are considered. Also, models of sound absorption in air are incorporated into these numerical schemes, using physical parameters that are appropriate for room acoustic scenarios.

A representação de malhas por meio de estrutura de dados e operadores topológicos e um dos focos principais da modelagem geométrica, onde permite uma implementação robusta e eficiente de mecanismos de refinamento adaptativo, alinhamento de células e acesso as relações de incidência e adjacência entre os elementos da malha, o que é de grande importância na maioria das aplicações em mecânica dos fluidos. No caso de malhas não estruturadas, a não uniformidade da decomposição celular e melhor representada por uma estrategia mais sofisticada, que são as estruturas de dados topológicas. As estruturas de dados topológicas indexam elementos de uma malha representando relações de incidência e adjacência entre elementos, garantindo acesso rápido às informações. Um dos aspectos mais comuns aos problemas tratados pela mecânica dos fluidos computacional é a complexidade da geometria do domínio onde ocorre o escoamento. O uso de estruturas de dados para manipular malhas computacionais e de grande importância pois realiza de modo eficiente as consultas às informações da malha e centraliza todas as operações sobre a malha em um único módulo, possibilitando sua extensão e adaptação em diversas situações. Este trabalho visou explorar o acoplamento de uma estrutura de dados topológica, a Mate Face, em um módulo simulador existente, de modo a gerenciar todos os acessos à malha e dispor operações e iteradores para pesquisas complexas nas vizinhanças de cada elemento na malha. O módulo simulador resolve as equações governantes da mecânica dos fluidos através da técnica de volumes finitos. Foi utilizada uma formulação que atribui os valores das propriedades aos centroides dos volumes de controle, utiliza métodos de alta ordem, os esquemas ENO e WENO, que tem a finalidade de capturar com eficiência descontinuidades presentes em problemas governados por equações diferenciais parciais hiperbólicas. As equações de Euler em duas dimensões representam os escoamentos de interesse no presente trabalho. O acoplamento da estrutura de dados Mate Face ao simulador foi realizada através da criação de uma biblioteca desenvolvida que atua como uma interface de comunicação entre os dois módulos, a estrutura de dados e o simulador, que foram implementados em diferentes linguagens de programação. Deste modo, todas as funcionalidades existentes na Mate Face tornaram-se acessíveis ao simulador na forma de procedimentos. Um estudo sobre malhas dinâmicas foi realizado envolvendo o método das molas para movimentação de malhas simulando-se operações de arfagem. A idéia foi verificar a aplicabilidade deste método para auxiliar simulações de escoamentos não estacionarios. Uma outra vertente do trabalho foi estender a estrutura Mate Face de forma a representar elementos não suportados a priori, de modo a flexibilizar o seu uso em simulações de escoamentos baseados no método de volumes finitos espectrais. O método dos volumes espectrais e utilizado para se obter alta resolução espacial do domínio computacional, que também atribui valores das propriedades aos centroides dos volumes de controle, porém, os volumes de controle são particionados em volumes menores de variadas topologias. Assim, uma extensão da Mate Face foi desenvolvida para representar a nova malha para a aplicação do método, representando-se cada particionamento localmente em cada volume espectral. Para todas as etapas deste trabalho, realizaram-se experimentos que validaram a utilizaação da estrutura de dados Mate Face junto a métodos numéricos. Desta forma, a estrutura pode auxiliar as ferramentas de simulações de escoamentos de fluidos no gerenciamento e acesso à malha computacional / The storage and access of grid files by data structures and topologic operators is one of the most important goals of geometric modeling research field, which allows an efficient and stable implementation of adaptive refinement mechanisms, cells alignment and access to incidence and adjacency properties from grid elements, representing great concernment in the majority of applications from fluid mechanics. In the case of non-structured grids, the cellular decomposition if non-uniform and is better suited by a more sophisticated strategy - the topologic data structs. The topologic data structs index grid elements representing incidence and adjacency properties from grid elements, ensuring quick access to information. One of most common aspects from problems solved by computational fluid mechanic is the complexity of the domain geometry where the fluid ows. The usage of data structures to manipulate computational grids is of great importance because it performs efficiently queries on grid information and centers all operations to the grid on a unique module, allowing its extension and flexible usage on many problems. This work aims at exploring the coupling of a topologic data structure, the Mate Face, on a solver module, by controlling all grid access providing operators and iterators that perform complex neighbor queries at each grid element. The solver module solves the governing equations from fluid mechanics though the finite volume technique with a formulation that sets the property values to the control volume centroids, using high order methods - the ENO and WENO schemes, which have the purpose of efficiently capture the discontinuities appearing in problems governed by hyperbolic conservation laws. The two dimensional Euler equations are considered to represent the flows of interest. The coupling of the Mate Face data structure to the solver module was achieved by a creation of a library that acts as an interface layer between both modules, the Mate Face and the solver, which had been implemented using different programming languages. Therefore, all Mate Face class methods are available to the solver module though the interface library in the form of procedures. A study of dynamic grids was made by using spring methods for the moving grid under pitch movement case. The goal was to analyze the applicability of such method to aid non stationary simulations. Another contribution of this work was to show how the Mate Face can be extended in order to deal with non-supported types of elements, allowing it to aid numeric simulations using the spectral finite volume method. The spectral nite volume method is used to obtain high spatial resolution, also by setting the property values to the control volume centroids, but here the control volumes are partitioned into smaller volumes of different types, from triangles to hexagons. Then, an extension of the Mate Face was developed in order to hold the new generated grid by the partitioning specfied by the spectral finite volume method. The extension of Mate Face represents all partitioned elements locally for each original control volume. For all implementations and proposals from this work, experiments were performed to validate the usage of the Mate Face along with numeric methods. Finally, the data structure can aid the fluid flow simulation tools by managing the grid file and providing efficient query operators

This work investigates numerically the process of Teflon ablation using a finite-volume discretization, implicit time integration and a domain decomposition method in three-dimensions. The interest in Teflon stems from its use in Pulsed Plasma Thrusters and in thermal protection systems for reentry vehicles. The ablation of Teflon is a complex process that involves phase transition, a receding external boundary where the heat flux is applied, an interface between a crystalline and amorphous (gel) phase and a depolymerization reaction which happens on and beneath the ablating surface. The mathematical model used in this work is based on a two-phase model that accounts for the amorphous and crystalline phases as well as the depolymerization of Teflon in the form of an Arrhenius reaction equation. The model accounts also for temperature-dependent material properties, for unsteady heat inputs and boundary conditions in 3D. The model is implemented in 3D domains of arbitrary geometry with a finite volume discretization on unstructured grids. The numerical solution of the transient reaction-diffusion equation coupled with the Arrhenius-based ablation model advances in time using implicit Crank-Nicolson scheme. For each time step the implicit time advancing is decomposed into multiple sub-problems by a domain decomposition method. Each of the sub-problems is solved in parallel by Newton-Krylov non-linear solver. After each implicit time-advancing step, the rate of ablation and the fraction of depolymerized material are updated explicitly with the Arrhenius-based ablation model. After the computation, the surface of ablation front and the melting surface are recovered from the scalar field of fraction of depolymerized material and the fraction of melted material by post-processing. The code is verified against analytical solutions for the heat diffusion problem and the Stefan problem. The code is validated against experimental data of Teflon ablation. The verification and validation demonstrates the ability of the numerical method in simulating three dimensional ablation of Teflon.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de proposer une méthode permettant d’optimiser la stratégie de maintenance d’un système multi-composants. Cette nouvelle stratégie doit être adaptée aux conditions d’utilisation et aux contraintes budgétaires et sécuritaires. Le vieillissement des composants et la complexité des stratégies de maintenance étudiées nous obligent à avoir recours à de nouveaux modèles probabilistes afin de répondre à la problématique. Nous utilisons un processus stochastique issu de la Fiabilité Dynamique nommé processus markovien déterministe par morceaux (Piecewise Deterministic Markov Process ou PDMP). L’évaluation des quantités d’intérêt (fiabilité, nombre moyen de pannes...) est ici réalisé à l’aide d’un algorithme déterministe de type volumes finis. L’utilisation de ce type d’algorithme, dans ce cadre d’application, présente des difficultés informatiques dues à la place mémoire. Nous proposons plusieurs méthodes pour repousser ces difficultés. L’optimisation d’un plan de maintenance est ensuite effectuée à l’aide d’un algorithme de recuit simulé. Cette méthodologie a été adaptée à deux systèmes ferroviaires utilisés par la SNCF, l’un issu de l’infrastructure, l’autre du matériel roulant. / The aim of this work is to propose a methodology to optimize a multi-components system maintenance. This new maintenance strategy must be adapted to budget and safety constraints and operating conditions. The aging of components and the complexity of studied maintenance strategies require us to use new probabilistic models in order to address the problem. A stochastic process from Dynamic Reliability calculations are here established by using a deterministic algorithm method based on a finite volume scheme. Using this type of algorithm in this context of application presents difficulties due to computer memory space. We propose several methods to counter these difficulties. The optimization of a maintenance plan is then performed using simulated annealing algorithm. This methodology was used to optimize the maintenance of two rail systems used by the French national railway company (SNCF).

Simulations of fluid flows over complex geometries are typically solved using a solution technique known as the overset meshing method. The geometry is meshed using grid types appropriate to the local geometry in a patchwork fashion, rather than meshing the entire geometry with one type of mesh. The strand-Cartesian approach is a simplification of this process. While high-order accurate solvers on Cartesian grids are simple to implement, strand grids are usually restricted to second-order accuracy, resulting in poor quality solutions. Flux correction is a high-order accurate solution method, specifically designed for use on strand grids. The flux correction method on strand grids is evaluated in conjunction with an overset Cartesian grid. Fundamental studies are considered which demonstrate the effectiveness of high-order methods in solving practical flows of interest.

Thesis (M.Sc. (Physics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

In this dissertation we develop and analyze numerical method to solve general elliptic boundary value problems with many scales. The numerical method presented is intended to capture the small scales effect on the large scale solution without resolving the small scale details, which is done through the construction of a multiscale map. The multiscale method is more effective when the coarse element size is larger than the small scale length. To guarantee a numerical conservation, a finite volume element method is used to construct the global problem. Analysis of the multiscale method is separately done for cases of linear and nonlinear coefficients. For linear coefficients, the multiscale finite volume element method is viewed as a perturbation of multiscale finite element method. The analysis uses substantially the existing finite element results and techniques. The multiscale method for nonlinear coefficients will be analyzed in the finite element sense. A class of correctors corresponding to the multiscale method will be discussed. In turn, the analysis will rely on approximation properties of this correctors. Several numerical experiments verifying the theoretical results will be given. Finally we will present several applications of the multiscale method in the flow in porous media. Problems that we will consider are multiphase immiscible flow, multicomponent miscible flow, and soil infiltration in saturated/unsaturated flow.

This thesis presents the author's contribution to the design and implementation of COOLFluiD, an object oriented software platform for the high performance simulation of multi-physics phenomena on unstructured grids. In this context, the final goal has been to provide a reliable tool for handling high speed aerothermodynamic applications. To this end, we introduce a number of design techniques that have been developed in order to provide the framework with flexibility and reusability, allowing developers to easily integrate new functionalities such as arbitrary mesh-based data structures, numerical algorithms (space discretizations, time stepping schemes, linear system solvers, ...),and physical models. Furthermore, we describe the parallel algorithms that we have implemented in order to efficiently read/write generic computational meshes involving millions of degrees of freedom and partition them in a scalable way: benchmarks on HPC clusters with up to 512 processors show their effective suitability for large scale computing. Several systems of partial differential equations, characterizing flows in conditions of thermal and chemical equilibrium (with fixed and variable elemental fractions)and, particularly, nonequilibrium (multi-temperature models) have been integrated in the framework. In order to simulate such flows, we have developed two state-of-the-art flow solvers: 1- a parallel implicit 2D/3D steady and unsteady cell-centered Finite Volume (FV) solver for arbitrary systems of PDE's on hybrid unstructured meshes; 2- a parallel implicit 2D/3D steady vertex-centered Residual Distribution (RD) solver for arbitrary systems of PDE's on meshes with simplex elements (triangles and tetrahedra). The FV~code has been extended to handle all the available physical models, in regimes ranging from incompressible to hypersonic. As far as the RD code is concerned, the strictly conservative variant of the RD method, denominated CRD, has been applied for the first time in literature to solve high speed viscous flows in thermochemical nonequilibrium, yielding some preliminary outstanding results on a challenging double cone flow simulation. All the developments have been validated on real-life testcases of current interest in the aerospace community. A quantitative comparison with experimental measurements and/or literature has been performed whenever possible.

When an electrically conducting fluid moves through a magnetic field, fluid mechanics and electromagnetism are coupled. This interaction is the object of magnetohydrodynamics, a discipline which covers a wide range of applications, from electromagnetic processing to plasma- and astro-physics. In this dissertation, the attention is restricted to turbulent liquid metal flows, typically encountered in steel and aluminium industries. Velocity measurements in such flows are extremely challenging because liquid metals are opaque, hot and often corrosive. Therefore, non-intrusive measurement devices are essential. One of them is the Lorentz force flowmeter. Its working principle is based on the generation of a force acting on a charge, which moves in a magnetic field. Recent studies have demonstrated that this technique can measure efficiently the mean velocity of a liquid metal. In the existing devices, however, the measurement depends on the electrical conductivity of the fluid. In this work, a novel version of this technique is developed in order to obtain measurements that are independent of the electrical conductivity. This is particularly appealing for metallurgical applications, where the conductivity often fluctuates in time and space. The study is entirely numerical and uses a flexible computational method, suitable for industrial flows. In this framework, the cost of numerical simulations increases drastically with the level of turbulence and the geometry complexity. Therefore, the simulations are commonly unresolved. Large eddy simulations are then very promising, since they introduce a subgrid model to mimic the dynamics of the unresolved turbulent eddies. The first part of this dissertation focuses on the quality and reliability of unresolved numerical simulations. The attention is drawn on the ambiguity that may arise when interpretating the results. Owing to coarse resolutions, numerical errors affect the performances of the discrete model, which in turn looses its physical meaning. In this work, a novel implementation of the turbulent strain rate appearing in the models is proposed. As opposed to its usual discretisation, the present strain rate is in accordance with the discrete equations of motion. Two types of flow are considered: decaying turbulence located far from boundaries, and turbulent flows between two parallel and infinite walls. Particular attention is given to the balance of resolved kinetic energy, in order to assess the role of the model. The second part of this dissertation deals with a novel version of Lorentz force flowmeters, consisting in one or two coils placed around a circular pipe. The forces acting on each coil are recorded in time as the liquid metal flows through the pipe. It is highlighted that the auto- or cross-correlation of these forces can be used to determine the flowrate. The reliability of the flowmeter is first investigated with a synthetic velocity profile associated to a single vortex ring, which is convected at a constant speed. This configuration is similar to the movement of a solid rod and enables a simple analysis of the flowmeter. Then, the flowmeter is applied to a realistic three-dimensional turbulent flow. In both cases, the influence of the geometrical parameters of the coils is systematically assessed.

No description available.