Comprehensive rehabilitation projects of dam spillways are made in Sweden, due to stricter dam safety guidelines for their discharge capacity. The Piano Key Weir (PKW) is an innovative design which has proven effective through several renovation projects made in many countries including France. In this study we investigate the flow patterns around a prototype PKW, located in Escouloubre dam in southern France, with numerical simulations through three different flow cases in Ansys Fluent. A computational domain containing the PKW is created in the CAD software Ansys SpaceClaim for the simulations. Three polyhexcore meshes are further generated using Ansys Fluent Meshing. The three flow cases are then simulated with a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) model, coupled with realizable k-epsilon and volume of fluid models. Through an assessment of the discretization error between three meshes, a relative error of one percent is obtained for the discharge rate. The numerical results are qualitatively compared with results from previously conducted physical experiments on this PKW. The RANS model does not capture the water surface undulations (due to turbulence) around the PKW. The effects from under modelled surface undulations are alleviated by inserting an air vent to the PKW, which results in a flow behaviour in good agreement with the physical experiments. Through this alteration, water discharge rates are computed with a maximum discrepancy of five percent compared with the corresponding experimental values. A large eddy simulation should be conducted in the future, to bring further light on air exchange and water interaction phenomena present in the PKW flow pattern.

In this paper, a novel approach for tracking moving structures in multiphase flows over larger axial ranges is presented, which at the same time allows imaging the tracked structures and their environment. For this purpose, ultrafast electron beam X-ray computed tomography (UFXCT) is being extended by an image-based position control. Application is scanning and tracking of, for example, bubbles, particles, waves and other features of multiphase flows within vessels and pipes. Therefore, the scanner has to be automatically traversed with the moving structure basing on real-time scanning, image reconstruction and image data processing. In this paper, requirements and different strategies for reliable object tracking in dual image plane imaging mode are discussed. Promising tracking strategies have been numerically implemented and evaluated.

<p>  </p> <p>Cavitation, liquid slosh, and splashes are ubiquitous in science and engineering. However, these phenomena are not fully understood. Yet to date, we do not understand when or why sometimes the splash seals, and other times does not. Regarding cavitation, a high temporal resolution method is needed to characterize this phenomenon. The low temporal resolution of experimental data suggests a model-based analysis of this problem. However, high-fidelity models are not always available, and even for these models, the sensitivity of the model outputs to the initial input parameters makes this method less reliable since some initial inputs are not experimentally measurable. As for sloshing, the air-liquid interface area and hydrodynamic stress for the liquid slosh inside a confined accelerating cylinder have not been experimentally measured due to the challenges for direct measurement.</p>

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Modelling solid-fluid multiphase flows are crucial to many applications such as fluidized beds, pyrolysis and gasification, catalytic cracking etc. Accurate modelling of the fluid-particle forces is essential for lab-scale and industry-scale simulations. Fluid-particle system solutions can be obtained using various techniques including the macro-scale TFM (Two fluid model), the meso-scale CFD-DEM (CFD - Discrete Element Method) and the micro-scale PRS (Particle Resolved Simulation method). As the simulation scale decreases, accuracy increases but with an exponential increase in computational time. Since fluid forces have a large impact on the dynamics of the system, this study trains deep learning models using micro-scale PRS data to predict drag forces on ellipsoidal particle suspensions to be applied to meso-scale and macro-scale models. Two different deep learning methodologies are employed, multi-layer perceptrons (MLP) and 3D convolutional neural networks (CNNs). The former trains on the mean characteristics of the suspension including the Reynolds number of the mean flow, the solid fraction of the suspension, particle shape or aspect ratio and inclination to the mean flow direction, while the latter trains on the 3D spatial characterization of the immediate neighborhood of each particle in addition to the data provided to the MLP. The trained models are analyzed and compared on their ability to predict three different drag force values, the suspension mean drag which is the mean drag for all the particles in a given suspension, the mean orientation drag which is the mean drag of all particles at specific orientations to the mean flow, and finally the individual particle drag. Additionally, the trained models are also compared on their ability to test on data sets that are excluded/hidden during the training phase. For instance, the deep learning models are trained on drag force data at only a few values of Reynolds numbers and tested on an unseen value of Reynolds numbers. The ability of the trained models to perform extrapolations over Reynolds number, solid fraction, and particle shape to predict drag forces is presented. The results show that the CNN performs significantly better compared to the MLP in terms of predicting both suspensions mean drag force and also mean orientation drag force, except a particular case of extrapolation where the MLP does better. With regards to predicting drag force on individual particles in the suspension the CNN performs very well when extrapolated to unseen cases and experiments and performs reasonably well when extrapolating to unseen Reynolds numbers and solid fractions. / M.S. / Multiphase solid-fluid flows are ubiquitous in various industries like pharmaceuticals (tablet coating), agriculture (grain drying, grain conveying), mining (oar roasting, mineral conveying), energy (gasification). Accurate and time-efficient computational simulations are crucial in developing and designing systems dealing with multiphase flows. Particle drag force calculations are very important in modeling solid-fluid multiphase flows. Current simulation methods used in the industry such as two-fluid models (TFM) and CFD-Discrete Element Methods (CFD-DEM) suffer from uncertain drag force modeling because these simulations do not resolve the flow field around a particle. Particle Resolved Simulations (PRS) on the other hand completely resolve the fluid flow around a particle and predict very accurate drag force values. This requires a very fine mesh simulation, thus making PRS simulations many orders more computationally expensive compared to the CFD-DEM simulations. This work aims at using deep learning or artificial intelligence-based methods to improve the drag calculation accuracy of the CFD-DEM simulations by learning from the data generated by PRS simulations. Two different deep learning models have been used, the Multi-Layer Perceptrons(MLP) and Convolutional Neural Networks(CNN). The deep learning models are trained to predict the drag forces given a particle's aspect ratio, the solid fraction of the suspension it is present in, and the Reynolds number of the mean flow field in the suspension. Along with the former information the CNN, owing their ability to learn spatial data better is additionally provided with a 3D image of particles' immediate neighborhood. The trained models are analyzed on their ability to predict drag forces at three different fidelities, the suspension mean drag force, the orientation mean drag, and the individual particle drag. Additionally, the trained models are compared on their abilities to predict unseen datasets. For instance, the models would be trained on particles of an aspect ratio of 10 and 5 and tested on their ability to predict drags of particles of aspect ratio 2.5. The results show that the CNN performs significantly better compared to the MLP in terms of predicting both suspension mean drag force and also mean orientation drag force, except a particular case of extrapolation where the MLP does better. With regards to predicting drag force on individual particles in the suspension, the CNN performs very well when extrapolated to unseen cases and experiments and performs reasonably well when extrapolating to unseen Reynolds numbers and solid fractions.

This dissertation focused on development and utilization of numerical and experimental approaches to improve the CFD modeling of fluidization flow of cohesive micron size particles. The specific objectives of this research were: (1) Developing a cluster prediction mechanism applicable to Two-Fluid Modeling (TFM) of gas-solid systems (2) Developing more accurate drag models for Two-Fluid Modeling (TFM) of gas-solid fluidization flow with the presence of cohesive interparticle forces (3) using the developed model to explore the improvement of accuracy of TFM in simulation of fluidization flow of cohesive powders (4) Understanding the causes and influential factor which led to improvements and quantification of improvements (5) Gathering data from a fast fluidization flow and use these data for benchmark validations. Simulation results with two developed cluster-aware drag models showed that cluster prediction could effectively influence the results in both the first and second cluster-aware models. It was proven that improvement of accuracy of TFM modeling using three versions of the first hybrid model was significant and the best improvements were obtained by using the smallest values of the switch parameter which led to capturing the smallest chances of cluster prediction. In the case of the second hybrid model, dependence of critical model parameter on only Reynolds number led to the fact that improvement of accuracy was significant only in dense section of the fluidized bed. This finding may suggest that a more sophisticated particle resolved DNS model, which can span wide range of solid volume fraction, can be used in the formulation of the cluster-aware drag model. The results of experiment suing high speed imaging indicated the presence of particle clusters in the fluidization flow of FCC inside the riser of FIU-CFB facility. In addition, pressure data was successfully captured along the fluidization column of the facility and used as benchmark validation data for the second hybrid model developed in the present dissertation. It was shown the second hybrid model could predict the pressure data in the dense section of the fluidization column with better accuracy.

Measuring the liquid velocity and turbulence parameters in multiphase flows is a challenging task. In general, measurements based on optical methods are hindered by the presence of the gas phase. In the present work, it is shown that this leads to a sampling bias. Here, particle image velocimetry (PIV) is used to measure the liquid velocity and turbulence in a bubble column for different gas volume flow rates. As a result, passing bubbles lead to a significant sampling bias, which is evaluated by the mean liquid velocity and Reynolds stress tensor components. To overcome the sampling bias a window averaging procedure that waits a time depending on the locally distributed velocity information (hold processor) is derived. The procedure is demonstrated for an analytical test function. The PIV results obtained with the hold processor are reasonable for all values. By using the new procedure, reliable liquid velocity measurements in bubbly flows, which are vitally needed for CFD validation and modeling, are possible. In addition, the findings are general and can be applied to other flow situations and measuring techniques.