Global renewable energy requirements rapidly increase with the transition to a fossil-free society. As a result, intermittent energy resources, such as wind- and solar power, have become increasingly popular. However, their energy production varies over time, both in the short- and long term. Hydropower plants are therefore utilized as a regulating resource more frequently to maintain a balance between production and consumption on the electrical grid. This means that they must be operated away from the design point, also known as the best-efficiency-point (BEP), and often are operated at part-load (PL) with a lower power output. Moreover, some plants are expected to provide a spinning reserve, also referred to as speed-no-load (SNL), to respond rapidly to power shortages. During this operating condition, the turbine rotates without producing any power. During the above mentioned off-design operating conditions, the flow rate is restricted by the closure of the guide vanes. This changes the absolute velocity of the flow and increases the swirl, which is unfavorable. The flow field can be described as chaotic, with separated regions and recirculating fluid. Shear layer formation between stagnant- and rotating flow regions can be an origin for rotating flow structures. Examples are the rotating-vortex-rope (RVR) found during PL operation and the vortical flow structures in the vaneless space during SNL operation, which can cause the flow between the runner blades to stall, also referred to as rotating stall. The flow structures are associated with pressure pulsations throughout the turbine, which puts high stress on the runner and other critical parts and shortens the turbine's lifetime. Numerical models of hydraulic turbines are highly coveted to investigate the detrimental flow inside the hydraulic turbines' different sections at off-design operating conditions. They enable the detailed study of the flow and the origin of the instabilities. This knowledge eases the design and assessment of mitigation techniques that expand the turbines' operating range, ultimately enabling a wider implementation of intermittent energy resources on the electrical grid and a smoother transition to a fossil-free society. This thesis presents the numerical study of the Porjus U9 model, a scaled-down version of the 10 MW prototype Kaplan turbine located along the Luleå river in northern Sweden. The distributor contains 20 guide vanes, 18 stay vanes and the runner is 6-bladed. The numerical model is a geometrical representation of the model turbine located at Vattenfall Research and Development in Älvkarleby, Sweden. The commercial software ANSYS CFX 2020 R2 is used to perform the numerical simulations. Firstly, the draft tube cone section of the U9 model is numerically studied to investigate the sensitivity of a swirling flow to the GEKO (generalized kω) turbulence model. The GEKO model aims to consolidate different eddy viscosity turbulence models. Six free coefficients are changeable to tune the model to flow conditions and obtain results closer to an experimental reference without affecting the calibration of the turbulence model to basic flow test cases. Especially, the coefficients affecting wall-bounded flows are of interest. This study aims to analyze if the GEKO model can be used to obtain results closer to experimental measurements and better predict the swirling flow at PL operation compared to other eddy viscosity turbulence models. Results show that the near-wall- and separation coefficients predict a higher swirl and give results closer to experimentally obtained ones. Secondly, a simplified version of the U9 model is investigated at BEP and PL operating conditions and includes one distributor passage with periodic boundary conditions, the runner and the draft tube. The flow is assumed axisymmetric upstream of the runner, hence the single distributor passage. Previous studies of hydraulic turbines operating at PL show difficulties predicting the flow's tangential velocity component as it is often under predicted. Therefore, a parametric analysis is performed to investigate which parameters affect the prediction of the tangential velocity in the runner domain. Results show that the model predicts the flow relatively well at BEP but has problems at PL; the axial velocity is overpredicted while the tangential is underpredicted. Moreover, the torque is overpredicted. The root cause for the deviation is an underestimation of the head losses. Another contributing reason is that the runner extracts too much swirl from the flow, hence the low tangential velocity and the high torque. Sensitive parameters are the blade clearance, blade angle and mass flow. Finally, the full version of the U9 model is analyzed at SNL operation, including the spiral casing, full distributor, runner and draft tube. During this operating condition, the flow is not axisymmetric; vortical flow structures extend from the vaneless space to the draft tube and the flow stalls between the runner blades. A mitigation technique with independent control of each guide vane is presented and implemented in the model. The idea is to open some of the guidevanes to BEP angle while keeping the remaining ones closed. The aim is to reduce the swirl and prevent the vortical flow structures from developing. Results show that the flow structures are broken down upstream the runner and the rotating stall between the runner blades is reduced, which decreases the pressure- and velocity fluctuations. The flow down stream the runner remains mainly unchanged.

Environmental concerns, resource depletion, energy security, technological advancements, and global policies are just a few of the variables influencing the global energy perspective. In the case of technological advancement, lithium batteries play a key role in the development of a more sustainable energy infrastructure. The high energy density and long lifespan of lithium batteries make them ideal for usage in a broad range of applications, such as portable electronics, electric vehicles, and grid-scale energy storage for renewable energy sources. However, there are certain possible concerns regarding the safe operation and performance of lithium batteries, most of which are associated with the temperature sensitivity of lithium batteries. Hence, battery thermal management systems are an essential component of a battery package for regulating the temperature level in lithium batteries to avoid the aging process, poor performance, and safety issues.   Many studies have been conducted to develop battery thermal management systems with improved cooling performance. Within this framework, Paper A in this licentiate thesis considers how the design of a lithium battery cell may be improved to reduce the thermal load on the thermal management system. An analytical model based on the integral transform technique is developed to accurately and efficiently predict the thermal behavior of a cylindrical lithium battery cell. Following model validation, the thermal behavior of cylindrical lithium-ion battery cells with different jelly-roll layers and can sizes are compared. The results demonstrate that 21700 cylindrical battery cells outperform other types of cylindrical battery cells in terms of thermal performance. Furthermore, the thermally optimal thicknesses for positive active material, negative active material, positive current collector, and negative current collector are 180, 34, 21, and 20 um, respectively. After learning about design considerations to reduce thermal issues in lithium-ion battery cells and developing a proper tool for further studies, the focus was set on the flow behavior surrounding a cylindrical battery cell in an air-based cooling system. The cooling system under consideration is a wall-bounded cross-flow heat exchanger, the most common air-based cooling system for battery applications. Despite the importance of the cooling system in battery safety, few studies have been conducted to investigate the thermo-flow characteristics of wall-bounded cross-flow heat exchangers. Hence, in the battery research field, it is common to estimate the performance of wall-bounded cross-flow heat exchangers using the thermal characteristics of free cross-flow heat exchangers due to their geometrical similarities. In Paper B, this assumption is scrutinized by comparing the thermo-fluid characteristics of free and wall-bounded cross-flow heat exchangers. According to the results, flow through both heat exchangers shows almost similar thermo-fluid behavior in areas sufficiently far from the bounding walls. A turbulence model study suggests that the k-kl-omega transition model is a time-efficient and reliable turbulence model for capturing thermo-fluid characteristics in such heat exchangers. Moreover, it is observed that the two different heat exchangers have an almost identical area-averaged heat transfer rate despite the local changes in Nusselt number along the height of cells. This finding shows that it is possible to do two-dimensional simulations for applications that only require an area-averaged heat transfer rate on the battery cells. The findings in Paper A and Paper B may be used to investigate the cooling performance of a battery thermal management system with a practical design. Hence, in Paper C, a comprehensive yet simplified model is developed that can be used to study the thermal field of lithium battery cells in a large-scale air-based battery thermal management system. The model consists of the CFD model derived in Paper B, which predicts the flow behavior around cells in the inner region of the battery package, and the analytical model described in Paper A, which determines the thermal field within the battery cells. The area-averaged heat transfer coefficient interconnects the models, and a system of equations is employed to estimate the row-to-row variation of the thermal field. The model is employed to assess the effect of transverse and longitudinal pitch ratios on the thermal performance of an air-based battery thermal management system used in a hybrid electric vehicle.

L'objectif de ce travail est de prendre en compte les instationnarités naturelles à grande échelle dans les écoulements décollés et à un coût plus faible que la LES, tout en s'intéressant à la modélisation des effets de paroi par des modèles statistiques au second ordre. S'inspirant des approches de Durbin, le modèle à pondération elliptique EB-RSM reproduit l'effet non-local de blocage, en résolvant une équation différentielle sur le terme de pression. La limite à deux composantes de la turbulence est bien prédite en canal. Ce modèle est appliqué à la marche descendante, dans une approche URANS. Nous avons montré que les erreurs numériques peuvent être suffisantes pour exciter le mode le plus instable de la couche cisaillée, et aboutir à une solution instationnaire. La solution est stationnaire quand on raffine le maillage, rendant l'URANS peu fiable. Récemment, Schiestel \& Dejoan ont proposé le modèle hybride non-zonal PITM. Le coefficient $C_{\e_2}$ de l'équation de la dissipation devient fonction de la coupure dans le spectre, et la valeur $C_{\e_1}=3/2$ est déduite par ces auteurs. Nous avons donné une formulation plus générale où la valeur de $C_{\e_1}$ est quelconque. Pour offrir un formalisme plus cohérent aux modèles hybrides non-zonaux dans les écoulements de paroi, une approche basée sur un filtrage temporel est proposée. Enfin, l'adaptation du modèle EB-RSM dans un cadre hybride a été réalisée. Les résultats en canal sont encourageants : la transition continue d'un modèle RANS en proche paroi à une LES au centre du canal est mise en évidence. Le transfert d'énergie des échelles modélisées vers celles résolues est bien reproduit quand on raffine le maillage.

Syngas consisting mainly of a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and other diluents, is an important fuel for power generation applications since it can be obtained from both biomass and coal gasification. Clean coal technologies require stable and efficient operation of syngas-fired gas turbines. The trapped vortex combustor (TVC) is a relatively new gas turbine combustor concept which shows tremendous potential in achieving stable combustion under wide operating conditions with low emissions. In the present work, combustion of low calorific value syngas in a TVC has been studied using in-situ laser diagnostic techniques and numerical modeling. Specifically, this work reports in-situ measurements of mixture fraction, OH radical concentration and velocity in a single cavity TVC, using state-of-the art laser diagnostic techniques such as Planar Laser-induced Fluorescence (PLIF) and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). Numerical simulations using the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approaches have also been carried out to complement the experimental measurements. The fuel-air momentum flux ratio (MFR), where the air momentum corresponds to that entering the cavity through a specially-incorporated flow guide vane, is used to characterize the mixing. Acetone PLIF experiments show that at high MFRs, the fuel-air mixing in the cavity is very minimal and is enhanced as the MFR reduces, due to a favourable vortex formation in the cavity, which is corroborated by PIV measurements. Reacting flow PIV measurements which differ substantially from the non-reacting cases primarily because of the gas expansion due to heat release show that the vortex is displaced from the centre of the cavity towards the guide vane. The MFR was hence identified as the controlling parameter for mixing in the cavity. Quantitative OH concentration contours showed that at higher MFRs 4.5, the fuel jet and the air jet stream are separated and a flame front is formed at the interface. As the MFR is lowered to 0.3, the fuel air mixing increases and a flame front is formed at the bottom and downstream edge of the cavity where a stratified charge is present. A flame stabilization mechanism has been proposed which accounts for the wide MFRs and premixing in the mainstream as well. LES simulations using a flamelet-based combustion model were conducted to predict mean OH radical concentration and velocity along with URANS simulations using a modified Eddy dissipation concept model. The LES predictions were observed to agree closely with experimental data, and were clearly superior to the URANS predictions as expected. Performance characteristics in the form of exhaust temperature pattern factor and pollutant emissions were also measured. The NOx emissions were found to be less than 2 ppm, CO emissions below 0.2% and HC emissions below 700 ppm across various conditions. Overall, the in-situ experimental data coupled with insight from simulations and the exhaust measurements have confirmed the advantages of using the TVC as a gas turbine combustor and provided guidelines for stable and efficient operation of the combustor with syngas fuel.