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<p>The design, simulation, and analysis of a reference atrium using ComputationalFluid Dynamics (CFD) are presented. Atria geometries can be observed in manybuildings but their understanding from an energy perspective is not fully understood.Due to the many physical phenomena occurring within these atria, it is often difficult toassess the thermal comfort, energy consumption, and functionality of an atrium's design.The scale of an atrium’s structure coupled with dynamic physical phenomena creates acomplex problem to solve. One particular tool that is useful in solving for detailedenergy quantities is CFD. Validation studies have been conducted using previousexperimental atria data to ensure confidence in the predictions. These validation studieswere successful and also provided further insight on turbulence models, glazing systems,HVAC systems, thermal mass, and fluid flow and heat transfer behavior in atriageometries. A design for a reference atrium located in Toronto, Canada was thensimulated for typical summer and winter conditions using various configurations forglazing, solar heat flux, wall materials, occupant load, and HVAC. These simulationsprovide a realistic analysis of the reference atria and conclusions for the behavior of thereference atria are made.</p> / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

The lymphatic and blood vascular systems are two important vessel networks that serve different roles in healthy states and in cancer. In breast cancer the most common cancer amongst women, mortality remains high despite increased treatment response due to metastatic spread, preferentially through the lymphatics. One aggressive subtype, triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) contributing to 15 to 30 percent of cases and is characterized by the absence of expression of three therapeutic biomarkers. As targeted therapy is limited, treatment relies on standard of care via surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy with limited efficacy and increase in survival. Chemotherapies negatively alter the lymphatic vasculature benefiting the tumor, through lymphangiogenesis. This dissertation seeks to understand how the mechanisms of commonly used chemotherapeutics, like carboplatin, and a novel 2nd generation ablative therapy called High Frequency Irreversible Electroporation (H-FIRE), which utilizes electric pulses to ablate tumor cells, affect the lymphatic and blood microvasculature in the tumor, surrounding fat pad, tumor draining lymph node (TDLN) using multiple analysis methods. This occurred through three main methods 1) identification of oxidative stress effects of chemotherapeutic application of carboplatin on lymphatic endothelial cells in vitro, 2) characterization of lymphatic and blood microvascular dynamics in a 4T1 breast cancer mouse model treated with sub-ablative H-FIRE, 3) through the development of a novel habitat imaging method to identify treatment specific changes in the tumor draining lymph node, and the development of a hybrid agent-based model (ABM) to test cancer cell flow mediated invasion in brain cancer. Herin the work showed that carboplatin induced lymphatic phenotypic changes occurred through generation of reactive oxygen species dependent on VEGFR3 and was reversed through treatment with the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine. In the 4T1 model, sub ablation with H-FIRE induced temporal remodeling of the lymphatic and blood vasculature within the viable tumor, in the surrounding fat pad, and in the tumor draining lymph node over seven days, suggesting an optimal time of application of adjuvant therapy. The development of a habitat imaging analysis method to identify TDLN vascular habitats and the perturbation to treatment in a retrospective analysis of prior work. Lastly, the development of a hybrid ABM through the incorporation of experimentally measured fluid flow fields from dynamic contrast enhanced MRI imaging building upon existing work, and showing the usefulness in comparing mechanisms of cancer cell invasion mediated fluid flow. Altogether, this work presents novel insight into the lymphatic system in cancer within various treatments contexts and new methods of quantifying changes due to treatment. Hopefully, these findings can be used to further inform the field towards a more comprehensive understanding of treatment effects in breast cancer. / Doctor of Philosophy / The lymphatic and blood vascular systems are two important vessel networks that serve different purposes in healthy states and in the disease called cancer. In breast cancer , a common form of cancer in women , spread of this cancer tends towards the lymphatic vasculature and eventually to other parts of the body. Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) a less common, but more aggressive form, relies on clinical standard treatments with anti-tumor drugs called chemotherapies. These chemotherapies negatively alter the lymphatic vasculature to the tumors benefit, leaving a lack new methods of treatment. This dissertation seeks to understand how the mechanisms of commonly used chemotherapeutics and a new promising pulsed electric field therapy , High frequency Irreversible Electroporation (H-FIRE), change the lymphatic and blood vessels over time and in different locations using different tools. This occurred through three main methods 1) the effects on lymphatic vascular cells treated with chemotherapy, 2) in a breast cancer mouse model treated with H-FIRE, 3) in math models of the draining lymphatic organ, called the lymph node and an agent-based math model (ABM) of cancer cell movement due to fluid flow. The work showed that in the lymphatic cells, carboplatin a type of chemotherapeutic used to treat breast cancer, changed lymphatic vasculature through generating stress through oxidation and was reversed through treatment with an anti-oxidant. In the breast cancer mouse model, incomplete ablation with H-FIRE caused time dependent changes to the lymphatic and blood vasculature in the tumor, in the surrounding tissue, and in the lymph node over seven days. This work shows the novel findings of pulsed electric field therapy causing changes to the lymphatic vasculature. The creation of a new method of identifying habitats of the lymph node was used to compare changes to the lymphatic and blood vasculature to treatment. Lastly, the creation of an ABM added measured fluid flow maps from medical imaging methods to build upon existing work, and showed the usefulness in comparing mechanisms of cancer cell invasion due to fluid flow. Altogether, this work presents novel insight into the lymphatic system in cancer within after various treatments are applied and new methods of measuring these changes because of treatment using multiple methods. It is our hope that these findings can be used to further inform the field towards a more comprehensive understanding of treatment effects in breast cancer.

<p dir="ltr">On many hypersonic vehicles, gaps are present on the outer surface of the vehicle and the interaction of the hypersonic freestream flow over these gaps can cause significant heat transfer to the vehicle. The project described in this thesis analyzed selected hypersonic gap problems and attempted to offer solutions to combat the heat transfer occurring in the gap. The first section of this thesis is a parametric study to understand the changes to the heat transfer and flow that modifications to the gap geometry can make. The second section is a comparison of the computational model to experimental data. The results of the studies show that adding a simple fillet or chamfer to the downstream step of the gap can reduce the maximum heat flux by over 90%. These results can be used to reduce the heat transfer caused by flow impingement in the gaps of hypersonic vehicles with a simple modification of the geometry and is consistent with the findings of other work in gap heating.</p>

<p dir="ltr">Grid convergence and scaling analyses have not been done rigorously for practical large-eddy simulations (LES). The challenge arises from the fact that there are two grid-related length scales: grid size and LES filter width. It causes the numerical and model errors in LES to be inherently coupled, making the convergence of either error difficult to analyze. This study works to overcome the challenge by developing scaling laws that can be used to guide the convergence analysis of errors in LES. Three different convergence cases are considered, and their respective scaling laws are developed by varying the ratio between grid size and filter width. A pool fire is adopted as a test case for the convergence analysis of LES. Qualitative and quantitative assessments of the LES results are made first to ensure reliable numerical solutions. In the subsequent scaling analysis, it is found that the results are consistent with their respective scaling laws. The results provide strong support to the developed scaling laws. The work is significant as it proposes a rigorous way to guide convergence analysis of LES errors. In a world where LES already has a wide range of applicability and is still becoming more prominent, it is imperative to have a thorough understanding of how it works including its convergence and scaling laws with respect to the change of grid size and filter width.</p>

This thesis is dedicated to the study of the turbulent fluid flow in rough-walled rock fractures. Fracture models were generated from 3D scans of fractured rock samples, while fluid flow was simulated numerically by means of FVM-based open-source CFD toolbox OpenFOAM, employing the high-performance computing cluster for the more demanding 3D models. First part of the thesis addresses the issue of fracture geometry. Realistic 2D and 3D fracture models were constructed from 3D scans of upper and lower halves of a fractured rock sample, taking both shear displacement and contact spots into account. Furthermore, we discuss the shortcomings of the available fracture aperture metrics and propose a new aperture metric based on the Hausdorff distance; imaging performance of the new metric is shown to be superior to the conventional vertical aperture, especially for rough fracture surfaces with abundant ridges and troughs. In the second part of the thesis we focus on the fluid flow through the rock fracture for both 2D and 3D cases. While previous studies were largely limited to the fully viscous Darcy or inertial Forchheimer laminar flow regimes, we chose to investigate across the widest possible range of Reynolds numbers from 0.1 to 10^6, covering both laminar and turbulent regimes, which called for a thorough investigation of suitable turbulence modeling techniques. Due to narrow mean aperture and high aspect ratio of the typical fracture geometry, meshing posed a particularly challenging problem. Taking into account limited computational resources and a sheer number of model geometries, we developed a highly-optimised workflow, employing the steady-state RANS simulation approach to obtain time-averaged flow fields. Our findings show that while flow fields remain mostly stationary and undisturbed for simpler contactless geometries, emergence of contact spots immediately triggers a transition to non-stationary flow starting from Re ∼ 10^2, which is reflected by the streamline tortuosity data. This transition disrupts the flow pattern across the fracture plane, causing strong channeling and large separation bubbles, with area of the latter being much larger than the generating contact spots. Adverse influence of the contact spots on the overall permeability is strong enough to override any benefits of aperture increase during shear and dilation. Contactless 3D models can to a certain degree be approximated by their 2D counterparts. Lastly, we investigate the influence of both shearing and contact spots on the overall permeability and friction factor of the fracture, drawing a parallel to the well-studied area of turbulent flow in rough-walled pipes and ducts. Unlike the latter, 3D curvilinear fracture geometries exhibit a gapless laminar–turbulent transition, behaving as a hydraulically rough channel in the turbulent range as the shear displacement increases.

<p dir="ltr">This thesis explores novel methods of steel reheating, simulating hydrogen as a cleaner fuel in the combustion furnace and magnetic induction heating as a viable alternative, by utilizing advanced numerical simulations, including Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA), to assess their performance and feasibility.</p><p dir="ltr">Hydrogen, known for its potential to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, is examined as a substitute for natural gas. Simulations revealed that hydrogen combustion results in higher flame temperatures and heat fluxes. While the CFD model achieved a high level of accuracy, with a maximum temperature error of 3% and an average deviation of 7% from real-world data, hydrogen fuel caused an increase in heat flux by up to 12% and higher slab surface temperatures. These changes led to steeper thermal gradients and increased stress, with peak stress levels reaching 90% of material limit. This simulation approach provides valuable data on the performance of different furnace fuels, helping to identify optimal fuel blends and configurations that minimize the risk of material failure while enhancing furnace efficiency.</p><p dir="ltr">The impact of scale formation on steel surfaces during reheating was also investigated. A mathematical model based on linear-parabolic equations was integrated into CFD simulations to predict scale growth. This model was validated against experimental data, showing an average error of 6%. The presence of scale led to a reduction in core temperature by up to 31 K and a 7.6% decrease in heat flux, which negatively affected heating efficiency. Scale formation also caused a significant drop in thermal conductivity, impacting heat transfer and slab uniformity. Pre-heating zone contributed minimally to overall scale formation despite its extended duration whereas a majority of scale growth was observed in the heating zone. Applications of this model include improving reheat furnace model efficiency and optimizing furnace operation to minimize scale.</p><p dir="ltr">Magnetic induction heating was also explored as an alternative to combustion-based reheating, assessing its potential benefits and challenges. The simulation results, validated with an average error of approximately 7% compared to literature data. showed uniform temperature distribution, and reduced stress levels with optimal power settings around 80 kW. A 3D transient simulation modeled an adaptive power cycle to minimize thermal stress highlighting the effectiveness of adaptive soaking strategies over continuous soaking in managing thermal stress, improving heating efficiency and material integrity.</p>

<p dir="ltr">The CFD-CAA method combines computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational aeroacoustics (CAA) techniques to analyze the interaction between fluid flow and the generation and propagation of sound. CFD is primarily concerned with simulating fluid flow patterns, while CAA focuses on predicting noise generation and its propagation in fluids. The CFD-CAA method provides a powerful tool for understanding and predicting the acoustic behavior of turbulent flows. By combining the strengths of CFD and CAA, this approach provides more precise and comprehensive analyses across various fields, thereby contributing to enhanced designs and noise control strategies.</p><p dir="ltr">Within industrial applications, a primary concern is noise source identification. This process enables engineers to locate and quantify the strength of noise sources within a system, facilitating the implementation of more effective strategies during the design process. A novel methodology, computational statistically optimized near-field acoustic holography (C-SONAH), is proposed to virtually identify aeroacoustic sources. Initially, sound pressure is obtained using the CFD-CAA method, followed by the application of the SONAH algorithm to locate acoustic sources and predict the sound field. C-SONAH offers computational advantages over direct CAA methods for simulating sound produced by systems with rotating elements, as CAA analyzes sources on the moving elements, making sound field calculation computationally expensive. The SONAH procedure converts these rotating sources into a series of equivalent stationary planar or cylindrical waves, reducing the number of sources and the time required to compute the sound field from each source. This methodology was demonstrated by characterizing the aerodynamic noise produced by a bladeless fan. The sound pressure level obtained by C-SONAH method was validated by the data predicted by the direct CFD-CAA method. Acoustic maps were reconstructed at different locations and frequencies, revealing that the C-SONAH method can predict noise sources generated by airflow and rotating components within the fan. Thus, it serves as an effective tool for understanding the aeroacoustic noise generation mechanism and guiding the design optimization of similar products.</p><p dir="ltr">The CFD-CAA method is also a powerful tool for design optimization. Computational simulations are typically less expensive and time-consuming than building and maintaining experimental setups, particularly for large or complex projects. Additionally, simulations reduce the need for multiple physical prototypes, which can shorten the development cycle. CFD-CAA simulations provide detailed flow and acoustic field data, including variables that may be difficult or impossible to measure experimentally, such as pressure distributions, velocity fields, and turbulent structures. In this dissertation, aeroacoustic characteristics and flow field information of vortex whistles were investigated using the CFD-CAA method. The simulation results clearly illustrate the swirling motion created in the vortex whistle cylinder and also demonstrate the linear frequency versus flow rate relationship characteristic of the whistle. The design of the vortex whistle was optimized based on the acoustic response and flow resistance by both simulations and experiments. The results suggest that the whistle with a thin inlet exhibits the best performance at high flow rates, while the whistle with a scale of 0.5 is the most sensitive to low flow rates, making it suitable for pediatric applications.</p><p dir="ltr">In CFD-CAA simulations, the time step typically cannot be too small due to limited computational resources. This constraint results in an aliasing error in spectral analysis. Consequently, an anti-aliasing operation prior to sampling is necessary to eliminate such errors from the acoustic source terms. In the present study, an anti-aliasing filter based on the compact finite difference formulation was designed within a time-domain, compact filter scheme. This filter was directly applied to the Navier-Stokes solver prior to sampling for CAA analysis. A cavity flow case was simulated to validate this mitigation strategy. The results indicate that the artificial spectral peak induced by aliasing error is removed without affecting other signature peaks. The anti-aliasing filter was also applied to more complex cases for predicting the acoustic field of a vortex whistle. The acoustic field around the vortex whistle, with both constant and variable inlet flow rates, was simulated, and the aliasing peak was successfully removed. Although the peak magnitudes decreased slightly due to the filter, the signature frequencies remained unchanged. Thus, the simulation with anti-aliasing operation can predict acoustic features without introducing aliasing errors, even if the time step is not sufficiently small, thereby significantly reducing simulation time.</p><p dir="ltr">In engineering applications, once noise sources are identified, the subsequent concern is noise reduction. An effective strategy for noise reduction involves acoustical absorbing materials to minimize noise emissions from components. Traditionally, experiments in engineering applications have focused on surface treatments to explore noise control techniques. However, the CFD-CAA method commonly assumes smooth and purely reflective wall surfaces. Consequently, there is growing interest in incorporating impedance boundary conditions into the CFD-CAA method. Since impedance boundary conditions are defined in the frequency domain, while CFD-CAA simulations operate in the time domain, direct implementation is not feasible. To address this issue, several methods have been proposed to define time-domain impedance boundary conditions in simulations. In the present study, a wall softness model was implemented in the CFD-CAA method and to examine a vortex whistle featuring an acoustically permeable surface. In simulations, an impedance boundary condition representing the properties of melamine foam was defined over the surface of a cylindrical cavity. The simulation results were validated against experimental data obtained from a vortex whistle with melamine foam. The findings revealed that the impedance of the melamine foam contributed to noise reduction at high frequencies. Additionally, at low airflow rates, the impedance boundary condition enhanced the signal-to-noise ratio for the low-frequency peak, which is advantageous in clinical applications.</p>

<p dir="ltr">The thermal efficiency of gas turbines improves with higher turbine inlet temperatures (TIT) or compressor outlet pressure. Nowadays, gas turbines achieve TITs up to 1600 °C for power generation and 2000 °C for aircraft. These temperatures far exceed the limits where structural integrity can be maintained. For Ni-based superalloys with thermal barrier coatings, that limit is about 1200 °C. Gas turbines can operate at these high temperatures because all parts of the turbine component that contact the hot gases are cooled so that material temperatures never exceed those limits. </p><p dir="ltr">Gas-turbine vanes and blades are cooled by internal and film cooling with the cooling air extracted from the compressor. Since the extracted air could be used to generate power or thrust, the amount of cooling air used must be minimized. Thus, numerous researchers have investigated fluid flow and heat transfer in internal and film cooling to enable effective cooling with less cooling flow. For internal cooling, significant knowledge gaps persist, notably in ducts with varying cross sections. Reviews of existing literature indicate a lack of studies on flow and heat transfer in cooling ducts that account for the taper in the blade geometry from root to tip for both power-generation and aircraft gas turbines.</p><p dir="ltr">This study investigates the flow and heat transfer in ribbed and smooth tapered U-ducts, under conditions relevant to turbine cooling by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and a reduced-order model (ROM) developed in this study. The CFD analysis was based on steady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with the Shear Stress Transport (SST) turbulence model. The CFD analysis examined the effects of rotation number (Ro = 0, 0.0219, 0.0336, 0.0731), Reynolds number (Re = 46,000, 100,000, 154,000), and taper angle (α = 0°, 1.41°) under conditions that are relevant to electric-power-generation gas turbines. CFD results obtained showed increasing the taper angle significantly increases both the friction coefficient and the Nusselt number, regardless of rotation. With rotation at Ro = 0.0336 and Re = 100,000, the maximum increase in the average friction coefficient and Nusselt number due to taper was found to be 41.7% and 36.6% respectively. Without rotation at Re = 46,000, those increases were 11.5% and 14.7% respectively. </p><p dir="ltr">The ROM was derived from the integral continuity, momentum, and energy equations for a thermally and calorically perfect gas to provide rapid assessments of radially outward flow in tapered ducts subjected to constant heat flux. The ROM was used to study the effects of taper angle (α = 0°, 1.5°, 3.0°), ratio of mean radius to hydraulic diameter (Rm/Dh = 45, 150), rotation number (Ro = 0, 0.025, 0.25), Reynolds number (Re = 37,000, 154,000), and thermal loadings (q" = 5×104, 105 W/m2) on the mean density, velocity, temperature, and pressure along the duct. The parameters studied are relevant to both electric-power-generation and aircraft gas turbines. Results obtained show density and pressure variations to be most affected by the rotation number, while velocity along the duct is most affected by the duct’s taper angle. Additionally, it was found that if the taper angle is sufficiently large (α = 3°), then the temperature could reduce along the duct despite being heated because the thermal energy is converted to mechanical energy. When compared to a duct without taper, the mass flow rate of the cooling air could be reduced by up to 44% to achieve the same temperature distribution of the cooling flow along the duct.</p><p dir="ltr">The ROM developed was assessed by comparing against grid-converged CFD results for both ribbed and smooth sections of the duct. The validation study showed the maximum relative errors for density, velocity, temperature, and pressure distributions to be 0.6%, 3.3%, 0.4%, and 0.3% for smooth sections, and 3.2%, 5.6%, 0.9%, and 3.0% for ribbed sections, respectively. Thus, the ROM developed has accuracy comparable to CFD based on steady RANS but is order of magnitude more efficient computationally, making it a valuable tool for preliminary design. </p><p><br></p>

<p dir="ltr">Increased scrutiny from customers and regulators to design aeroengines that are more efficient and environmentally friendly has pushed the need to investigate new engine architectures, manufacturing techniques, and computational fluid dynamic methods. This has led to the development of the CSTAR Gen. 2.5 centrifugal compressor, which uses an additively manufactured diffusion system and investigates the aerodynamic performance of an axi-centrifugal aeroengine. Additionally, an isolated unsteady diffuser computational model was previously developed that seeks to significantly reduce the computational cost of unsteady CFD in the diffuser.</p><p dir="ltr">The research presented in this paper is part of an ongoing attempt to utilize the capabilities of isolated unsteady diffuser modeling and rapid prototyping enabled through additive manufacturing in CSTAR Gen. 2.5 to develop a design framework that allows for quick computational and experimental analysis of diffusion systems in centrifugal compressors. Specifically, the scope of isolated unsteady diffuser modeling, which was previously only implemented in CSTAR Gen. 1 and at a single loading condition, is expanded by analyzing computational instabilities when applying the methodology to CSTAR Gen. 2.5 and analyzing results from four loading conditions (high loading, design point, low loading, and near choke) along a speedline.</p><p dir="ltr">Computational instabilities in the CSTAR Gen. 2.5 isolated diffuser models were determined to be caused by the decreased vaneless space compared to Gen. 1, which led to less “mixed” flow at the impeller outlet and a stronger diffuser potential field affecting the inlet profile. A boundary profile correction approach was developed which slightly increased very low total pressure near the diffuser shroud and negative radial velocity regions near the shroud and pitchwise locations of the diffuser vane leading edges while minimizing the overall affected area. The correction was successfully validated using 3D flow structure and minimum, average, and maximum total pressure, absolute velocity magnitude, and pressure comparisons at the diffuser inlet between an isolated and full-stage model.</p><p dir="ltr">Prediction capabilities of 3D flow structures and 1D performance parameters by isolated unsteady diffuser models were validated with results from full-stage unsteady models at each loading condition. The analysis indicated consistent performance by the isolated unsteady diffuser model at all loading conditions. An overall agreement in 3D flow structures was found, and trends in the full-stage unsteady models along the speedline were tracked well by the isolated unsteady model. At all loading conditions, there was a consistent over-representation of the separation region along the diffuser vane pressure side in the diffuser passage, overprediction of total pressure magnitude at the core of the flow at the diffuser outlet, and over- or underprediction of total pressure loss and static pressure recovery respectively. The similarity in the results between full-stage and isolated unsteady models, tracking of trends along the speedline, and consistent differences in 3D flow structure predictions and 1D performance parameters validates the isolated unsteady diffuser methodology for use at loading conditions from surge to choke.</p>