QC 20110118

The topic of this thesis concerns the LHC, the next large particle accelerator at CERN which will start operating in 2007. Being based on superconductivity, the LHC needs to operate at very low temperatures, which makes great demands on the cryogenic system of the accelerator. To cope with the heat loads induced by the particle beam, a beam screen cooled with forced flow of supercritical helium is used. There is an interest in upgrading the energy and luminosity of the LHC in the future and this would require a higher heat load to be extracted by the beam screen cooling system. The objective of this thesis is to quantify different ways to upgrade this system by mainly studying the effects of different pressure and temperatures levels as well as a different cooling medium, neon. For this a numerical program which simulates one-dimensional pipe flow was constructed. The frictional forces were accounted for by the empirical concept of friction factor. For the fluid properties, software using empirically made correlations was used. To validate the numerical program, a comparison with previous experimental work was done. The agreement with experimental data was good for certain flow configurations, worse for others. From this it was concluded that further comparisons with experimental data must be made in order to tell the accuracy of the mathematical model and the correlations for fluid properties used. When using supercritical helium, thermo-hydraulic instabilities may arise in the cooling loop. It was of special interest to see how well a numerical program could simulate and predict this phenomenon. It was found that the numerical program did not function for such unstable conditions; in fact it was much more sensitive than what reality is. For the beam screen cooling system we conclude that to cope with the increased heat loads of future upgrades, an increase in pressure level is needed regardless if the coolant remains helium, or is changed to neon. Increasing the pressure level also makes that the problems with thermo-hydraulic instabilities can be avoided. Of the two coolants, helium gave the best heat extraction capacity. Unlike neon, it is also possible to keep the present temperature level when using helium.

<p>Nuclear reactors release small amounts of radioactivity during their normal operations. The most common method of calculating the dose to the public that results from such releases uses Gaussian Plume models. We are investigating these methods using CAP88-PC, a computer code developed for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the USA that calculates the concentration of radionuclides released from a stack using Pasquill stability classification. A buoyant or momentum driven part is also included. The uptake of the released radionuclide by plants, animals and humans, directly and indirectly, is then calculated to obtain the doses to the public. This method is well established but is known to suffer from many approximations and does not give answers that are accurate to be better than 50% in many cases. More accurate, though much more computer-intensive methods have been developed to calculate the movement of gases&nbsp / using fluid dynamic models. Such a model, using the code FLUENT can model complex terrains and will also be investigated in this work. This work is a preliminary study to compare the results of the traditional Gaussian plume model and a fluid dynamic model for a simplified case. The results indicate that Computational Fluid Dynamics calculations give qualitatively similar results with the possibility of including much more effects than the simple Gaussian plume model.</p>

A spur dike is a hydraulic structure built on the bank of a river at some angle to the main flow direction. A series of spur dikes in a row may also be placed on one side or both sides of a river to form a spur dike field. Spur dikes are used for two main purposes, namely river training and bank protection. For river training, spur dikes may be used to provide a desirable path for navigation purposes or to direct the flow to a desirable point such as a water intake. For bank protection, spur dikes may be used to deflect flow away from a riverbank and thus protect it from erosion. It has also been observed that spur dikes provide a desirable environment for aquatic habitat. Despite the fact that spur dikes are useful hydraulic structures, they have been found to increase the flow resistance in rivers and hence increase the flow stage. The present study focuses on the quantification of the flow resistance and associated flow stage increase due to a single spur dike and also that of a spur dike field. Increased flow stage is referred to herein as a backwater effect.<p> In the first stage of the study, the flow resistance due to a single spur dike, expressed as a drag force exerted on the flow in an open channel, was studied and quantified. The work was carried out in a rigid bed flume, with the model spur dike being simulated using various sizes of a two-dimensional (2-D) rectangular plate. Several discharge conditions were studied. The drag force exerted by the spur dike for both submerged and unsubmerged flow conditions was determined directly from measurements made using a specially designed apparatus and also by application of the momentum equation to a control volume that included the spur dike. It was found that the unit drag force (i.e., drag force per unit area of dike) of an unsubmerged spur dike increases more rapidly with an increase in the discharge when compared with that of a submerged spur dike. The results also showed that an increase in the blockage of the open channel cross-section due to the spur dike is the main parameter responsible for an increase in the spur dike drag coefficient, hence the associated flow resistance and backwater effect. Based on these findings, relationships were developed for estimating the backwater effect due to a single spur dike in an open channel.<p> In the second stage of the study, the flow resistance due to a spur dike field expressed as a drag force exerted on the flow was quantified and subsequently related to the backwater effect. The work was carried out in a rigid bed flume, with the model spur dikes simulated using 2-D, rectangular plates placed along one side of the flume. For various discharges, the drag force of each individual spur dike in the spur dike field was measured directly using a specially-designed apparatus. For these tests, both submerged and unsubmerged conditions were evaluated along with various numbers of spur dikes and various relative spacings between the spur dikes throughout the field. It was concluded that the configuration of a spur dike field in terms of the number of spur dikes and relative spacing between the spur dikes has a substantial impact on the drag force and hence the flow resistance and backwater effect of a spur dike field. The most upstream spur dike had the highest drag force amongst the spur dikes in the field, and it acted as a shield to decrease the drag force exerted by the downstream spur dikes. From the experiments on the submerged spur dikes, it was observed that the jet flow over the spur dikes has an important effect on the flow structure and hence the flow resistance.<p> In the third stage of the study, the flow field within the vicinity of a single submerged spur dike was modeled using the three-dimensional (3-D) computational fluid dynamic (CFD) software FLUENT. Application of the software required solution of the 3-D Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations wherein the Reynolds stresses were resolved using the RNG ê-å turbulence model. One discharge condition was evaluated in a smooth, rectangular channel for two conditions, including uniform flow conditions without the spur dike in place and one with the spur dike in place. The CFD model was evaluated based on some experimental data acquired from the physical model. It was found that the CFD model could satisfactorily predict the flow resistance and water surface profile adjacent to the spur dike, including the resulting backwater effect. Furthermore, the CFD model gave a good prediction of the velocity field except for the area behind the spur dike where the effects of diving jet flow over the spur dike was not properly modeled.

<p>The main purpose of this research is to investigate liquid entrainment mechanisms of annular flow by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques. A numerical model is developed. The model is based on the physics of an upward annular flow. In the modeling, a transient renormalization group (RNG) k-å model in conjunction with enhanced wall treatment method was employed. In order to reconstruct the two-phase interface, the geometric reconstruction scheme of volume of fluid (VOF) model was adopted. Fluent® 6.18 was used as the solution tool. Simulation results indicated that disturbance waves were generated first on the two-phase interface and their evolution eventually resulted in the liquid entrainment phenomena. The most significant accomplishment of this work is that details of the entrainment mechanisms are well described by the numerical simulation work. In addition, two new entrainment mechanisms are presented. One entrainment mechanism demonstrates that the evolution of individual waves causes the onset of liquid entrainment; the other mechanism shows that the coalescence of two adjacent waves (during the course of their evolution) plays an important role in the progression of liquid entrainment. The newly developed entrainment mechanisms are based on conservation laws. In order to explore the flow physics of the targeted annular flow, the law of the wall, in conjunction with an analytical model based on a force balance, was applied to previously collected experimental data. Results indicated that the film flow had strong features of near-wall flow. In addition, based on prior experimental work and a newly developed physical wave model by researchers in the Microgravity Research Group, University of Saskatchewan, a steady RNG k-å model, in conjunction with the enhanced wall treatment method, was applied to the gas core. The simulation results showed turbulent flow features in the gas core and strong effects of the interfacial waves on the simulation results. The above information forms the physical foundation for the simulation work on the entrainment mechanism.</p><p>One significant contribution to the authors research group is the liquid entrainment fraction data. A new method was introduced to make the measurements. The method combined a chemically-based titration method with a newly-designed instrument, a separator, to effectively measure the entrainment fraction. Experiments were conducted at low system pressure (~ 1 atm) and relatively low gas and liquid superficial velocities (Vsg = 25.8 m/s to 45.5 m/s, and Vsl = 0.15 m/s to 0.30 m/s, respectively). The entrainment fraction was found to be under 7 %, with a maximum uncertainty of 0.26 % for all the experimental set points. Repeatability test results and comparisons with previous entrainment data indicated that the new technique can perform as well as other measurement techniques.</p>

The continued research and development of high-order methods in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is primarily motivated by their potential to significantly reduce the computational cost and memory usage required to obtain a solution to a desired level of accuracy. In this work, a high-order Central Essentially Non-Oscillatory (CENO) finite-volume scheme is developed for the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations in three dimensions. The proposed CENO scheme is based on a hybrid solution reconstruction procedure using a fixed central stencil. A solution smoothness indicator facilitates the hybrid switching between a high-order k-exact reconstruction technique, and a monotonicity preserving limited piecewise linear reconstruction algorithm. The resulting scheme is applied to the compressible forms of the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations in three dimensions. The latter of which includes the application of this high-order work to the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of turbulent non-reacting flows.

During endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR), if the stent-graft device is too long for a given patient the redundant (extra) length adopts a convex configuration in the aneurysm. Based on clinical experience, we hypothesize that redundant stent-graft configurations increase the downward force acting on the device, thereby increasing the risk of device dislodgement and failure. This work numerically studies both steady-state and physiologic pulsatile blood flow in redundant stent-graft configurations. Computational fluid dynamics simulations predicted a peak downward displacement force for the zero-, moderate- and severe-redundancy configurations of 7.36, 7.44 and 7.81 N, respectively for steady-state flow; and 7.35, 7.41 and 7.85 N, respectively for physiologic pulsatile flow. These results suggest that redundant stent-graft configurations in EVAR do increase the downward force acting on the device, but the clinical consequence depends significantly on device-specific resistance to dislodgement.

The development of high-order solution methods remain a very active field of research in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). These types of schemes have the potential to reduce the computational cost necessary to compute solutions to a desired level of accuracy. The goal of this thesis has been to develop a high-order Central Essentially Non Oscillatory (CENO) finite volume scheme for multi-block unstructured meshes. In particular, solutions to the compressible, inviscid Euler equations are considered. The CENO method achieves a high-order spatial reconstruction based on the k-exact method, combined with hybrid switching to limited piecewise linear reconstruction in non-smooth regions to maintain monotonicity. Additionally, fourth-order Runge-Kutta time marching is applied. The solver described has been validated through a combination of high-order function reconstructions, and solutions to the Euler equations. Cases have been selected to demonstrate high-orders of convergence, the application of the hybrid switching method, and the multi-block techniques which has been implemented.

A scramjet inlet was designed for use on a small scale, Mach six, ethylene-fuelled vehicle. The inlet used strut-based cantilevered fuel injectors and a well-defined mixing duct to mix fuel prior to the combustor. Designed using theoretical and numerical analyses, the resulting inlet configuration consisted of a single body shock inlet with vertical fuel injector struts and four cantilevered injectors per strut side. This inlet was 80 cm long and 42 cm high. Numerical analysis of the vehicle was conducted with computational fluid dynamics by solving the Favre-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations; turbulence was simulated using the Wilcox k-ω model. Multispecies simulations in two and three dimensions were used to evaluate the design. Analysis of the simulated flow features, thrust potential and mixing efficiency demonstrated favourable vehicle performance. In particular, the inlet allowed for complete combustion when lean equivalence ratios of less than 0.7 were used.

Increasing environmental concerns and fuel prices motivate the study of alternative, unconventional aircraft configurations. One such example is the blended-wing-body configuration, which has been shown to have several advantages over the conventional tube-and-wing aircraft configuration. In this thesis, a blended-wing-body aircraft is studied and optimized aerodynamically using a high-fidelity Euler-based flow solver, integrated geometry parameterization and mesh movement, adjoint-based gradient evaluation, and a sequential quadratic programming algorithm. Specifically, the aircraft is optimized at transonic conditions to minimize the sum of induced and wave drag. These optimizations are carried out with both fixed and varying airfoil sections. With varying airfoil sections and increased freedom, up to 52% drag reduction relative to the baseline geometry was achieved: at the target lift coefficient of 0.357, a drag coefficient of 0.01313 and an inviscid lift-to-drag ratio of 27.2 were obtained.