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Student Number : 9910049F - MSc (Eng) dissertation - School of Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / Cavitation was generated in tap water samples by the transmission of tension waves into the liquid, using a hydrodynamic shock tube. The liquid cavitated at absolute negative pressures of about -1 bar. Simulations of bubble responses showed qualitative agreement with experimental observations of oscillatory growth and collapse cycles. Pressure records showed secondary pressure pulsations, confirming the oscillatory nature of the collapse at each rise in pressure. More quantitative comparison of theory and photographic records would require a camera with a higher capture rate. Experiments using another experimental facility involved liquid compression waves with peak static pressures of up to about 1 MPa, which were transmitted from a conventional gas shock tube into a liquid section and were intended to be reflected at the free surface as expansion waves. These experiments were unsuccessful in producing absolute negative pressures or cavitation that was visible through an optical observation section. This was attributed to transition layer effects and pulse attenuation, which contributed to lowering of the peak negative pressure behind the expansion wave, as well as the depth of the transducer and observation section below the free surface, which may have been too low for the peak tension to be superimposed on the lower pressure behind the incident compression wave. Pressure records suggested that, for lower driver pressures, cavitation occurred below the observation section, although this could not be verified optically.

Student Number : 9804064R - MSc research report - School of Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / A qualitative and quantitative study of the hydraulic analogy; that is the analogy between flow with a free surface and two dimensional compressible gas flow, is described. The experimentation was done using a water table, and results are compared with Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) results for actual free surface flow models, and a fictitious gas model. Different test cases are considered (i) a wedge moving at steady supersonic/supercritical speeds of Froude or Mach number equal to 2.38, 3.12 and 4.31 (ii)unsteady motion of a wedge accelerating to supersonic speeds and then decelerating. Quantitative results for the experimental case are achieved by using a colour encoding slope detection technique. Qualitatively, with respect to wave angles, the fictitious gas case shows the best agreement to the experimental case, but at higher Froude/Mach numbers the free surface models also show good agreement. Quantitatively, with respect to wave location and depth profile, the free surface models show better agreement to the experimental case. For the unsteady case the resulting flow patterns are quite similar for the two cases considered, namely the experimental and free surface CFD cases.

Turbulence is a familiar phenomenon which gives rise to complicated problems in many branches of engineering. Hinze has set forth the following definition for turbulence: "Turbulent fluid motion is an irregular condition of flow in which the various quantities show a random variation in time pnd space coordinates, so that statistically distinct average values can be discerned." Osborne Reynolds (1894) was the first to introduce the notion of statistical mean values into the study of turbulence. He visualized turbulent flow as the sum of mean and eddying motion. By introducing this sum of mean velocity and fluctuating velocity into the Navier-Stokes equations and with the aid of the continuity equation, he derived equations giving relationships between the various components of the fluctuating velocity. It was soon realized that before any further results could be obtained from a theoretical analysis of Reynold;s equations of motion, a mechanism had to be postulated for the ihteraction of fluctuating v~locity components at different points in the turbulent field. Consequently, three decades after Reynold's: work, phenomenological theories of turbulence, such as the momentum-transfer theory of Prandtl (1926), the vorticity transport theory of Taylor (1932) and the similarity theory of Karman (1930) were introduced. Not only are they based on unrealistic physical models, but they do not furnish any information beyond temporal-mean velocity distribution. A complete theory of turbulence should describe the mechanism of production of turbulence, its convection, diffusion, distribution, and eventual dissipation for any given boundary conditions.

Coherent vortices are generated in flow fields due to flow interaction with sharp solid surfaces. Such vortices generate significant disturbances in the flow and affect its further development. In this dissertation attention is focused on the interaction of vortices with solid or free liquid/air surfaces. We examine vortices with their axis parallel or normal to the surface. Three main cases were examined: the interaction of a vortex pair propagating towards a solid boundary, the interaction of spanwise vortices in a turbulent boundary layer, and finally the interaction of spanwise vortices with a flat-plate wake and a free liquid surface. These problems hold significance in several engineering applications, including investigations into trailing wing tip vortices and their interaction with the ground, vortical effects on the development of turbulent boundary layers and free surface signatures and their detection in ship/submarine wakes. Data are acquired with a laser Doppler velocimetry system (LDV) and with Particle-Image Velocimetry (PIV), using a high-speed digital video camera. The LDV system measures two components of velocity along appropriately chosen planes. Grids of data were acquired for different pitch rates of a disturbing flap that generates vortices. Phase-averaged vorticity and turbulence level contours are estimated and presented. It is found that vortices with diameter the order of the boundary layer quickly diffuse and disappear while their turbulent kinetic energy spreads uniformly across the entire boundary layer. Larger vortices have a considerably longer life span and in turn feed more vorticity into the boundary layer. Trailing edge vortices are generated in a water tunnel by sharp hinged motions of a flap. These vortices are allowed to reconnect with the free surface and mix with a turbulent free shear layer. The flow is conditionally sampled via frame grabbing of free surface shadowgraphs. It is found that the vortex core bends away from the plane of the shear layer. Moreover, contrary to earlier findings, organized velocity fluctuations decrease as the free surface is approached. / Ph. D.

No / The paper presents an incompressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) model to investigate the wave overtopping of coastal structures. The SPH method is a grid-less Lagrangian approach which is capable of tracking the large deformations of the free surface with good accuracy. The incompressible algorithm of the model is implemented by enforcing the constant particle density in the pressure projection. The SPH model is employed to reproduce a transient wave overtopping over a fixed horizontal deck and the regular/irregular waves overtopping of a sloping seawall. The computations are validated against the experimental and numerical data and a good agreement is observed. The SPH modelling is shown to provide a promising tool to predict the overtopping characteristics of different waves. The present model is expected to be of practical purpose if further improvement in the spatial resolution and CPU time can be adequately made.

No / Free surface flows of practical relevance in many engineering problems are almost always turbulent. In this paper, a numerical model to compute the free surface flow with turbulent effects is presented. The shallow water equations together with a k-ε turbulent model are discretized and simulated using a MUSCL-HANCOCK finite volume scheme. The proposed 2D k-ε shallow water model calculates the depth-averaged quantities such as water depth and velocity profile. The depth-averaged turbulent viscous stresses are determined from the depthaveraged version of a traditional 3D k-ε turbulent model. The numerical model is applied to a flow within channels that contain full depth obstructions. The k-ε turbulent model results are compared with existing Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) predictions and show a high level of accuracy.

Geophysical granular flows, such as snow avalanches, pyroclastic density currents, mudslides and debris flows, can be extremely hazardous to local populations, and understanding their complex behaviour remains an important challenge. This project aims to provide insight into these events by exploring different aspects in isolation, using a combination of mathematical theory, numerical simulations and small-scale experiments. Firstly, the effect of lateral confinement is examined by studying granular material moving in an inclined chute. This can have applications to natural releases flowing down confined valleys or conduits, and the relative simplicity of the geometry also provides a useful test case for new theoretical models. One such model is the recent depth-averaged μ(I)-rheology, which, because of the viscous terms introduced into the depth-averaged momentum balance, may be described as an intermediate approach between full constitutive laws and classical shallow-water-type equations for dense granular flows. Here, a generalisation of the new system to two spatial dimensions is described, and the resulting viscous equations are able to capture the cross-slope curvature of the downslope velocity profiles in steady uniform chute flows. This may be regarded as major progress compared to traditional hyperbolic models, which only admit constant velocity solutions. Particle size-segregation in geophysical granular flows is then investigated, which can cause important feedback on the overall bulk properties as it can lead to the development of regions with different frictional properties. A particularly striking example is segregation-induced 'finger' formation, where large particles are segregated to the flow surface and sheared to form a resistive coarse-rich front, which is unstable and spontaneously breaks down into a series of lobate structures. These travel both faster and further than one might anticipate. To model such segregation-mobility feedback effects, the depth-averaged μ(I)-rheology is extended to bidisperse flows by coupling with a depth-integrated model for size-segregation. The system of equations remains mathematically well-posed and is able to qualitatively capture finger formation, with the newly-introduced viscous terms controlling the characteristics of the leveed channels that develop. A more subtle segregation effect is studied in bidisperse roll waves, which form as small irregularities merge and coarsen as they move downslope, eventually growing into destructive large amplitude pulses. Experimental measurements show lateral, as well as vertical, segregation profiles, with the coarser grains accumulating at the fastest moving wave crests. The disturbances that form in mixtures with higher proportions of large particles grow more slowly, leading to smaller amplitude waves that travel at slower speeds, and the new coupled model predicts qualitatively similar behaviour. Finally, the influence of complex topography is investigated. A smooth two-dimensional bump is placed across the width of a chute, which, depending on the initial conditions, can lead to the formation of an airborne jet or granular shock at steady state. A simple depth-averaged model in a curvilinear coordinate system following the topography accurately captures both regimes, and represents a significant improvement on using an aligned Cartesian approach.

Incompressible free-surface flows involving highly complex and violent phenomena are of great importance to the engineering industry. Applications such as breaking-wave impacts, fluid-structure interaction, and sloshing tanks demand an accurate and noise-free pressure field, and require large-scale simulations involving millions of computation points. This thesis addresses the need with the novel use of a graphics processing unit (GPU) to accelerate the incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (ISPH) method for highly non-linear and violent free-surface flows using millions of particles in three dimensions. Compared to other simulation techniques, ISPH is robust in predicting a highly accurate pressure field, through the solution of a pressure Poisson equation (PPE), whilst capturing the complex behaviour of violent free-surface flows. However, for large-scale engineering applications the solution of extremely large PPE matrix systems on a GPU presents multiple challenges: constructing a PPE matrix every time step on the GPU for moving particles, overcoming the GPU memory limitations, establishing a robust and accurate ISPH solid boundary condition suitable for parallel processing on the GPU, and exploiting fast linear algebra GPU libraries. A new GPU-accelerated ISPH algorithm is presented by converting the highly optimised weakly-compressible SPH (WCSPH) code DualSPHysics and combining it with the open-source ViennaCL linear algebra library for fast solutions of the ISPH PPE. The challenges are addressed with new methodologies: a parallel GPU algorithm for population of the PPE matrix, mixed precision storage and computation, and extension of an existing WCSPH boundary treatment for ISPH. Taking advantage of a GPU-based algebraic multigrid preconditioner for solving the PPE matrix required modification for ISPH's Lagrangian particle system. The new GPU-accelerated ISPH solver, Incompressible-DualSPHysics, is validated through a variety of demanding test cases and shown to achieve speed ups of up to 25.3 times and 8.1 times compared to single and 16-threaded CPU computations respectively. The influence of free-surface fragmentation on the PPE matrix solution time with different preconditioners is also investigated. A profiling study shows the new code to concentrate the GPU's processing power on solving the PPE. Finally, a real-engineering 3-D application of breaking focused-wave impacting a surface-piercing cylindrical column is simulated with ISPH for the first time. Extensions to the numerical model are presented to enhance the accuracy of simulating wave-structure impact. Simulations involving over 5 million particles show agreement with experimental data. The runtimes are similar to volume-of-fluid and particle-in-cell solvers running on 8 and 80 processors respectively. The 3-D model enables post-processing analysis of the wave mechanics around the cylinder. This study provides a substantial step for ISPH. Incompressible-DualSPHysics achieves resolutions previously too impractical for a single device allowing for the simulation of many industrial free-surface hydrodynamic applications.

When a highly deformable elastic sphere impacts a water surface at an oblique angle it can skip several times in a manner similar to a skipping stone. However, this sphere seems to skip more readily and with more ease than a traditional skipping stone. This thesis examines the improved skipping characteristics of highly deformable elastic spheres made from cured silicone rubber. The effect of impact velocity, impact angle, sphere diamter and material shear modulus on ricochet trajectory is experimentally examined using high speed photography and image processing techniques. Experimental evaluation shows that deformation is the primary contributor to an increased lift force upon impact. An analytical model is presented in addition to a regime diagram predicting ricochet results from impact conditions.