In order to protect gas turbine blades from hot gases exiting the combustor, several intricate external and internal cooling concepts are employed. High pressure stage gas turbine blades feature serpentine passages where rib turbulators are installed to enhance heat transfer between the relatively colder air bled off from the compressor and the hot internal walls. Most of the prior studies have been restricted to Reynolds number of 90000 and several studies have been carried out to determine geometrically optimized parameters for achieving high levels of heat transfer in this range of Reynolds number. However, for land-based power generation gas turbines, the Reynolds numbers are significantly high and vary between 105 and 106. Present study is targeted towards these high Reynolds numbers where traditional rib turbulator shapes and prescribed optimum geometrical parameters have been investigated experimentally. A steady-state liquid crystal thermography technique is employed for measurement of detailed heat transfer coefficient. Five different rib configurations, viz., 45 deg., V-shaped, inverse V-shaped, W-shaped and M-shaped have been investigated for Reynolds numbers ranging from 150,000 to 400,000. The ribs were installed on two opposite walls of a straight duct with aspect ratio of unity. For very high Reynolds numbers, the heat transfer enhancement levels for different rib shapes varied between 1.3 and 1.7 and the thermal hydraulic performance was found to be less than unity. / Master of Science

The presence of roughness on a surface subject to high Reynolds number flows promotes the formation of a turbulent boundary layer and the generation of a fluctuating pressure field imposed on the surface. While numerous studies have investigated the wall pressure fluctuations over zero-pressure gradient smooth walls, few studies have examined the effects of surface roughness on the wall pressure field. Additionally, due to the difficulties in obtaining high Reynolds number flows over fully rough surfaces in laboratory settings, an even fewer number of studies have investigated this phenomenon under flow conditions predicted to be fully free of transitional effects that would ensure similarity laws could be observed. This study presents the efforts to scale and describe the wall pressure spectrum of a rough wall, high Reynolds number turbulent boundary layer free of transitional effects. Measurements were taken in the Virginia Tech Stability Wind Tunnel for both smooth and rough walls. A deterministic roughness fetch composed of 3-mm hemispheres arranged in a 16.5-mm square array was used for the rough surface. Smooth and rough wall flows were examined achieving Reynolds numbers up to Re_θ = 68700 and Re_θ = 80200 respectively, with the rough wall flows reaching roughness based Reynolds numbers up to k_g⁺ = 507 with a simultaneous blockage ratio of δ/k_g = 76. A new roughness based inner variable scaling is proposed that provides a much more complete collapse of the rough wall pressure spectra than previous scales had provided over a large range of Reynolds numbers and roughness configurations. This scaling implies the presence of two separate time scales associated with the near wall turbulence structure generation. A clearly defined overlap region was observed for the rough wall surface pressure spectra displaying a frequency dependence of Ï ^-1.33, believed to be a function of the surface roughness configuration and its associated transport of turbulent energy. The rough wall pressure spectra were shown to decay more rapidly, but based on the same function as what defined the smooth wall decay. / Master of Science

No description available.

Numerous efforts have contributed to the study of phase-change problems for over a century|both analytical and numerical. Among those numerical approximations applied to solve phase-transition problems, phase-field models attract more and more attention because they not only capture two important effects, surface tension and supercooling, but also enable explicitly labeling the solid and liquid phases and the position of the interface. In the research of this dissertation, a phase-field model has been employed to simulate 2-D dendrite growth of pure nickel without a flow, and 2-D ice crystal growth in a high-Reynolds-number lid-driven-cavity flow. In order to obtain the details of ice crystal structures as well as the flow field behavior during freezing for the latter simulation, it is necessary to solve the phase-field model without convection and the equations of motion on two different scales. To accomplish this, a heterogeneous multiscale method is implemented for the phase-field model with convection such that the phase-field model is simulated on a microscopic scale and the equations of motion are solved on a macroscopic scale. Simulations of 2-D dendrite growth of pure nickel provide the validation of the phase-field model and the study of dendrite growth under different conditions, e.g., degree of supercooling, interface thickness, kinetic coefficient, and shape of the initial seed. In addition, simulations of freezing in a lid-driven-cavity flow indicate that the flow field has great effect on the small-scale dendrite structure and the flow eld behavior on the large scale is altered by freezing inside it.

A turbulent channel flow was used to study the scaling of the combined effects of roughness and flow injection on the mean flow and turbulence statistics of turbulent plane Poiseuille flow. It was found that the additional momentum injected through the rough surface acted primarily to enhance the roughness effects and, with respect to the mean flow, blowing produced similar mean flow effects as increasing the roughness height. This was not found to hold for the turbulence statistics, as a departure from Townsend’s hypothesis was seen. Instead, the resulting outer-scaled streamwise Reynolds stress for cases with roughness and blowing deviated significantly from the roughness only condition well throughout the inner and outer layers. Investigation into this phenomena indicated that suppression of the large-scale motions due to blowing may have been contributing to this deviation.

There have been very few studies investigating the rough wall pressure spectra under fully rough flows, which are relevant to many common engineering applications operating within this regime. This investigation uses the Virginia Tech Stability Wind Tunnel to perform experiments on a series of high Reynolds number zero pressure gradient turbulent boundary layers formed over rough walls in an effort to better understand and characterize the behavior of the rough wall pressure spectrum. The boundary layers were fully rough, and the boundary layer height remained sufficiently larger than the height of the roughness elements. Two rough surfaces were tested. One consisted of an array of 1-mm ordered hemispherical elements spaced 5.5-mm apart, and the other contained 3-mm hemispherical elements randomly spaced, but with the same element density as 1/3 of the 1-mm ordered roughness. The wall pressure spectrum and its scaling were then studied in detail, and it was found that the rough wall turbulent pressure spectrum at vehicle relevant conditions is defined by three scaling regions. One of which is a newly discovered high frequency scaling defined by viscosity, but controlled by the friction velocity adjusted to exclude the pressure drag on the roughness elements. Based on these three scaling regions an empirical model describing the wall pressure spectra for hydraulically smooth, traditionally rough, and fully rough flows was explored. Two point wall pressure fluctuations were also analyzed for each surface condition, and it was found that the roughness inhibits the convective velocities within the inner portions of the boundary layer. / Master of Science

Direct and large-eddy simulations of wall-bounded turbulent flows in complex geometries are presented in the thesis. To avoid the challenging resolution requirements of the near-wall region, we develop a virtual wall model in generalized curvilinear coordinates and incorporate the non-equilibrium effects via proper treatment of the momentum equations. The wall-modeled large-eddy simulation (WMLES) framework is formulated based on the wall model, accomplished via the stretched-vortex subgrid scale (SGS) model for the LES region. Based on this, we develop high-resolution in-house CFD codes, including direct numerical simulation (DNS), wall-resolved simulation (WRLES) and WMLES for wall-bounded turbulence simulations in complex geometries. First, we present LES of flow past different airfoils with Rec, based on the free-stream velocity and airfoil chord length, ranging from 104 to 2.1106. The numerical results are verified with DNS at low Rec, and validated with experimental data at higher Rec, including typical aerodynamic properties such as pressure coefficient distributions, velocity components, and also more challenging measurements such as skin-friction coefficient and Reynolds stresses. The unsteady separation behavior is investigated with skin friction portraits, which reveal a monotonic shrinking of the near wall structure scale. Second, we present LES of turbulent flow in a channel constricted by streamwise periodically distributed hill-shaped protrusions. Two Reynolds number cases, i.e. Reh=10595 and 33000 (based on the hill height and bulk mean velocity through the hill crest), are utilized to verify and validate our WMLES results. All comparisons show reasonable agreement, which enables us to further probe simulation results at higher Reynolds number (Reh=105). The Reynolds number effects are investigated, with emphasis on the mean skin-friction coefficients, separation bubble size and pressure fluctuations. The flow field at the top wall is evaluated with the empirical friction law and log-law as in planar channel flows. Finally, we present DNS of flow past the NACA0012 airfoil (Rec=104, AoA=10) with wavy roughness elements located near the leading edge. The effects of 2D surface roughness on the aerodynamic performance are investigated. For k8, massive separation occurs and almost covers the suction side of the airfoil dominating the airfoil aerodynamic performance.

In this study, two major internal erosion initiation processes, suffusion and concentrated leak mechanisms, which lead to both defect formation in a dam’s body and its foundation and high throughflow in dams subjected to internal erosion were studied. This understanding has the potential to facilitate numerical modelling and expedite dam safety assessment studies.  The throughflow properties of coarse rockfill material were studied by; analysing filed pump test data, performing extensive laboratory experiments with a large-scale apparatus and numerically simulating the three-dimensional flow through coarse rock materials, replicating the material used in the laboratory experiments. Results from the tests demonstrate that the parameters of the nonlinear momentum equation of the flow depend on the Reynolds number for pore Reynolds numbers lower than 60000.  Numerical studies were also carried out to conduct numerical experiments. By applying a Lagrangian particle tracking method, a model for estimating the lengths of the flow channels in the porous media was developed.  The shear forces exerted on the coarse particles in the porous media were found to be significantly dependent on the inertial forces of the flow. Suffusion and concentrated leak mechanisms were also studied by means of laboratory experiments to develop a theoretical framework for continuum-based numerical modelling. An erosion apparatus was designed and constructed with the capability of applying hydraulic and mechanical loading. Results were then used to develop constitutive laws of the soil erosion as a function of the applied hydromechanical load for both suffusion and concentrated leak mechanisms. Both the initiation and mass removal rate of were found to be dependent on the soil in-situ stresses. A three-dimensional electrical-resistivity-based tomography method was also adopted for the internal erosion apparatus and was found to be successful in visualising the porosity evolution due to suffusion. / <p>QC 20161006</p>

Este trabalho é dedicado à análise e implementação de esquemas "upwind" de alta ordem modernos e o modelo de turbulência k-epsilon padrão no Freeflow-2D; um ambiente integrado para simulação numérica em diferenças finitas de problemas de escoamentos incompressíveis com superfícies livres. O propósito do estudo é a simulação de escoamentos de fluidos newtonianos incompressíveis, bidimensionais, confinados e/ou com superfícies livres e a altos valores do número de Reynolds. O desempenho do código Freeflow-2D atual é avaliada na simulação do escoamento numa expansão brusca e de um jato livre incidindo perpendicularmente sobre uma superfície rígida impermeável. O código é então aplicado na simulação de um jato planar turbulento em uma porção de fluido com superfície livre e estacionário. Os resultados numéricos obtidos são comparados com dados experimentais, soluções analíticas e soluções numéricas de outros trabalhos. / This work is devoted to the analysis and implementation of modern high-order upwind schemes and the standard k-epsilon turbulence model into the Freeflow-2D; a finite difference integrated environment for the numerical simulation of incompressible free surface flow problems. The purpose of this study is the two-dimensional simulation of high-Reynolds incompressible newtonian confined and/or free surface flows. The performance of the current Freeflow-2D code is assessed by applying it to the simulation of flow over a backward facing step and of an impinging free jet onto an impermeable rigid surface. The code is then applied to a turbulent planar jet into a pool. The numerical results are compared with experimental data, analytical solution, and numerical simulations of other works.

Mieux comprendre les spécificités de la dynamique des couches limites à grand nombre de Reynolds malgré les contraintes métrologiques et son coût de simulation numérique est crucial. A titre d'exemple, cette dynamique peut déterminer plus de la moitié de la traînée d'un avion en croisière. Décrire la turbulence pariétale peut guider la résolution numérique d'une partie des fluctuations à un coût maîtrisé par des stratégies WMLES (simulation des grandes échelles avec modèle de paroi). Les présentes analyses physiques de couches limites turbulentes incompressibles à gradient de pression nul et à grand nombre de Reynolds s'appuient sur des simulations numériques avancées. Après validation d'une base de données, le frottement moyen pariétal est décomposé selon l'identité FIK (Fukagata et al. (2002)), dont l'application malgré le développement spatial est discutée. Une analyse spectrale montre que les grandes échelles (\lambda_x > \delta) contribuent à environ la moitié du frottement vers Re_\theta = 10^4. Les limitations de l'identité FIK motivent la dérivation d'une décomposition physique de la génération du frottement dont le comportement asymptotique est alors relié à la production d'énergie cinétique turbulente dans la zone logarithmique. Pour mieux reconstruire les spectres spatiaux, une nouvelle méthode d'estimation de la vitesse de convection turbulente en fonction de la longueur d'onde des fluctuations, adaptée au développement spatial et à des signaux temporels de durée finie, est dérivée, interprétée et évaluée à Re_\theta = 13000. Certaines des conclusions éclairent des modifications d'une stratégie WMLES, le mode III de la méthode ZDES. / Better understanding the specificities of the dynamics of high-Reynolds number boundary layers despite metrological constraints and its numerical simulation cost is crucial. For instance, this dynamics can determine more than half of the drag of a cruising aircraft. Describing wall turbulence can guide the numerical resolution of some of the fluctuations at a limited cost by WMLES strategies (wall-modelled large eddy simulation). The present physical analyses of zero-pressure gradient incompressible turbulent boundary layers at high Reynolds number rely on advanced numerical simulations. After validating a database, mean skin friction is decomposed by means of the FIK identity (Fukagata et al. (2002)), whose application despite the spatial growth is discussed. A spectral analysis shows that the large scales (\lambda_x > \delta) contribute approximately half of the friction near Re_\theta = 10^4. The limitations of the FIK identity motivate the derivation of a physical decomposition of the generation of friction whose asymptotic behaviour is then related to turbulent kinetic energy production in the logarithmic layer. In order to better reconstruct spatial spectra, a new method to estimate the turbulent convection velocity as a function of the wavelength of the fluctuations, adapted to spatial growth and to temporal signals of finite duration, is derived, interpreted, and assessed at Re_\theta = 13000. Some of the conclusions enlighten modifications to a WMLES strategy, mode III of the ZDES method.