An experimental study has been performed to investigate the condensation on the inner surface of open cavities located on horizontal and vertical surfaces of a refrigerator to simulate ice dispensers, water dispensers, electronic display slots, and door handles, etc. Cavity size, cavity depth and insulation thickness were variable parameters. Cavities were located on fresh food and freezer compartments to study two different boundary conditions. Level of condensation was put into a scale based on visual observation for condensed water droplets on the cavity surface. As a practical tool for design engineers, insulation thickness was plotted as a function of cavity depth indicating the level of condensation. Similar cavity geometries were tested on both freezer and fresh food compartments. Aluminum foil attached behind the inner surface of a cavity located on the fresh food door helped to decrease the level of condensation significantly. However, condensation can not be avoided for the cavities located on the freezer compartment deeper than critical values. Forming radius at the corners and on the edges of cavities decreased condensation on these regions. The effects of air circulation on condensation inside and outside the refrigerator were also investigated for some cavities. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) method was used to visualize non-disturbed air flow pattern over the cavity and at the cavity opening. High convective heat transfer at the cavity center was strongly associated with relatively high air velocity. Temperature distribution and flow pattern were analyzed by a CFD Programme. Condensation due to relatively low temperatures at the corners and on the edges was associated with conductive heat transfer in multiple directions and insufficient air circulation on these regions.

Ce travail porte sur la caractérisation de la dynamique intra-cavitaire en cavité ouverte, dont il existe peu d'études expérimentales, ainsi que sur le contrôle de cet écoulement. Nous avons réalisé une étude paramétrique des régimes primaire et secondaire de l'écoulement dans lesquels des structures de type Taylor-Görtler apparaissent. Nous avons identifié les seuils de bifurcation et montré leur nature systématiquement supercritique. Nous avons également montré que différentes familles de modes propagatifs ou stationnaires pouvaient être sélectionnées en fonction de la géométrie de la cavité. Cela a confirmé des prédictions réalisées dans des analyses de stabilité linéaire de l'écoulement de base. Nous avons montré que le régime secondaire résulte de la superposition d'ondes propagatives gauche et droite. Une tentative d'identification des coefficients des équations complexes couplées de Ginzburg-Landau décrivant cette dynamique a été conduite mais la sensibilité des coefficients à de multiples paramètres n'a pas permis d'obtenir des coefficients physiquement acceptables. Un forçage des oscillations de la couche cisaillée a été entrepris à l'aide d'un actionneur plasma froid à décharge à barrière diélectrique placé en amont de la cavité. L'analyse de la réponse de l'écoulement à un forçage périodique d'amplitude variable a permis d'identifier des plages d'accrochage en fréquence. Enfin, nous avons réalisé un contrôle en boucle fermée des oscillations de la couche cisaillée à l'aide d'une loi de contrôle à retard proposée par Pyragas dans le cadre des systèmes dynamiques chaotiques. / This work is devoted to the characterization of the dynamic inside an open cavity flow, for which few experimental studies exist. A control of the flow has been also investigated. We have performed a parametric study of the first and second regime of the flow for which Taylor-Görtler vortices type appear. Bifurcation thresholds have been identified and their systematic supercritical nature has been highlighted. We have also showed that different family of propagating or stationary modes can be selected depending on the geometry of the cavity. This has confirmed predictions obtained by linear stability analysis of the base flow in the literature. We have showed that the second regime results from the superposition of left and right propagating waves. We attended to identify coefficients of the complex coupled Ginzburg-Landau equations that describe the dynamics but the values of the coefficients are sensitive to multiple parameters. A control of oscillations of the shear layer has been achieved by the mean of a plasma actuator with dielectric barrier discharge located upstream of the cavity. Locked regimes have been identified by the analysis of the flow response to a periodic perturbation with different amplitude. Finally, we have performed a closed loop control of the oscillations of the shear layer using a delay feedback control law proposed by Pyragas in the context of chaotic dynamical systems.

The dispersion property of periodic structures is a hot research topic in the last decade. By exploiting dispersion properties, one can manipulate the propagation of electromagnetic waves, and produce effects that do not exist in conventional materials. This thesis is devoted to two important dispersion effects: negative refraction and designed surface plasmons. First, we introduce negative refraction and designed surface plasmons, including a historical perspective, main areas for applications and current trends. Several numerical methods are implemented to analyze electromagnetic effects. We apply the layer-KKR method to calculate the electromagnetic wave through a slab of photonic crystals. By implementing the refraction matrix for semi-infinite photonic crystals, the layer-KKR method is modified to compute the coupling coefficient between plane waves and Bloch modes in photonic crystals. The plane wave method is applied to obtain the band structure and the equal-frequency contours in two-dimensional regular photonic crystals. The finite-difference time-domain method is widely used in our works, but we briefly discuss two calculation recipes in this thesis: how to deal with the surface termination of a perfect conductor and how to calculate the frequency response of high-Q cavities more efficiently using the Pad\`{e} approximation method. We discuss a photonic crystal that exhibits negative refraction characterized by an effective negative index, and systematically analyze the coupling coefficients between plane waves in air and Bloch waves in the photonic crystal. We find and explain that the coupling coefficients are strong-angularly dependent. We first propose an open-cavity structure formed by a negative-refraction photonic crystal. To illuminate the physical mechanism of the subwavelength imaging, we analyze both intensity and phase spectrum of the transmission through a slab of photonic crystals with all-angle negative refraction. It is shown that the focusing properties of the photonic crystal slab are mainly due to the negative refraction effect, rather than the self-collimation effect. As to designed surface plasmons, we design a structured perfectly conducting surface to achieve the negative refraction of surface waves. By the average field method, we obtain the effective permittivity and permeability of a perfectly conducting surface drilled with one-dimensional periodic rectangle holes, and propose this structure as a designed surface plasmon waveguide. By the analogy between designed surface plasmons and surface plasmon polaritons, we show that two different resonances contribute to the enhanced transmission through a metallic film with an array of subwavelength holes, and explain that the shape effect is attributed to localized waveguide resonances. / QC 20100817