APPLICATION OF THE VOLUME OF FLUID METHOD TO SIMULATE THE PROCESS OF MELTING AND MOVEMENT OF FUEL

The article considers the possibility of using the method of multiphase fluid Volume of Fluid (VOF), the Ansys Fluent program, for numerical simulation of the melting process of the materials of the experimental device and their movement over the volume of the computational domain. For modeling the design of a typical experimental device tested in the reactor was selected, a two-dimensional computational model was developed, methods for solving the thermal problem were described, and the simulation results were presented.

Shapes and Rise Velocities of Single Bubbles in a Confined Annular Channel: Experiments and Numerical Simulations

Shapes and rise velocities of single air bubbles rising through stagnant water confined inside an annular channel were investigated by means of experiments and numerical simulations. Fast video imaging and image processing were used for the experiments, whilst the numerical simulations were carried out using the volume of fluid method and the open-source package OpenFOAM. The confinement of the annular channel did not affect the qualitative behavior of the bubbles, which exhibited a wobbling rise dynamic similar to that observed in bubbles rising through unconfined liquids. The effect of the confinement on the shape and rise velocity was evident; the bubbles were less deformed and rose slower in comparison with bubbles rising through unconfined liquids. The present data and numerical simulations, as well as the data collected from the literature for use here, indicate that the size, shape, and rise velocity of single bubbles are closely linked together, and prediction methods that fail to recognize this perform poorly. This study and the limited evidence documented in the literature indicate that the confinement effects observed in non-circular channels of complex shape are more complicated than those observed with circular tubes, and much less well understood.

Numerical Simulation of the Fused Deposition Modeling for the Manufacturing of Parts with both High Geometric Fidelity and Mechanical Quality

With increasing usage of additive manufacturing methods for mechanical parts the need for precise and reliable simulations of the manufacturing process increases as well. In this paper various com- putations suited for simulating the fused deposition modeling process are considered in two dimensions. In fused deposition modeling a molten polymer is laid down on a prescribed path before the cooling of the melt begins. The occuring flows are treated as multiphase flows. To model the deposition of the filament, methods of computational fluid dynamics are used in ANSYS-Fluent, namely the volume of fluid method (VOF). Different numerical experiments are simulated

Numerical Study on the Rising Motion of Bubbles near the Wall

Based on the volume of fluid method (VOF), the rising characteristics of bubbles in near-wall static water are studied. In this study, the influence of the wall on the rising motion of the bubble was studied by changing the distance of the bubble wall, the diameter of the bubble, the arrangement of the bubble and the size ratio, etc. The influence is expressed as the average swing amplitude of the “Z”-shaped motion when the bubble rises. The study found that in the case of a single bubble, the wall surface has a certain influence on the rise of the bubble, and its degree is affected by the bubble wall distance and the bubble diameter. The influence of bubble wall distance is more obvious. The greater the bubble wall distance, the less the bubble is affected by the wall; in the case of double bubbles, the influence of the interaction force between the bubbles is significantly greater than the wall surface.

An Atomization Model of Air Spraying Using the Volume-of-Fluid Method and Large Eddy Simulation

When painting complex surfaces, such as large-curvature surfaces, poor coating quality is often obtained, which may be caused by lack of an appropriate atomization model, insufficient understanding of atomization mechanisms and laws, and improper painting parameters. This paper presents a numerical model of paint atomization of air spraying using the volume-of-fluid method and large eddy simulation. The interface capture and the turbulent flow were mainly considered in the model: the former was tracked by the volume-of-fluid method and the latter was predicted by the large eddy simulation. After the computational domain being meshed by the staggered-grid method, the governing equations were discretized by the finite volume method and were solved by the SIMPLE (Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure-Linked Equations) Consistent algorithm. The results of numerical simulations show that the characteristics of atomization flow field, such as velocity variation, pressure distribution, and paint volume fraction are in agreement with the regularities of atomization. Moreover, the primary and secondary atomization phenomena can be clearly observed: as soon as the paint issues from the nozzle, the paint flow begins to distort and the paint fragments continuously eject from the main paint flow and then these paint fragments distort and disintegrate into smaller elements. A comparison with the experimental data from the literature proves that the model of the whole atomization process of air spray is effective. The model is suitable for simulating the whole atomization process and easy to obtain initial conditions, which can be applied to set the appropriate painting parameters and study paint atomization mechanisms and laws in depth.