Lagrangian Analysis of Unsteady Partial Cavitating Flow Around a Three-Dimensional Hydrofoil

This study employs an incompressible homogeneous flow framework with a transport-equation-based cavitation model and shear stress transport turbulence model to successfully reproduce the unsteady cavitating flow around a three-dimensional hydrofoil. Cavity growth, development, and break-off during the periodic shedding process are adequately reproduced and match experimental observations. The predicted shedding frequency is very close to the experimental value of 23 ms. By monitoring the motions of the seeding trackers, growth-up of attached cavity and dynamic evolution of U-type cavity are clearly displayed, which indicating the trackers could serve as an effective tool to visualize the cavitating field. Repelling Lagrangian Coherent Structure (RLCS) is so complex that abundant flow patterns are highlighted, reflecting the intricacy of cavity development. The formation of cloud cavities is clearly characterized by the Attracting Lagrangian Coherent Structure (ALCS), where bumbling wave wrapping the whole shedding cavities indicates the rotating transform of cavities and stretching of the wave eyes shows the distortion of vortices. Generation of the re-entrant jet is considered to be not only associated with the adverse pressure gradient due to the positive attack angle, but also the contribution of cloud cavitating flow, based on the observation of a buffer zone between the attached and cloud cavities.

Fluid transportation and heat transfer analysis of PP/TiO2 nanocomposites in an internal mixer

The internal mixer is an important devise for processing the polymer nanocomposites acting as a chemical reactor. In this article, based on the computational fluid dynamics method, the fluid transportation and heat transfer analysis of sol–gel reaction processing for Polypropylene (PP)/TiO2 nanocomposites in the internal batch mixers with single-winged and two-winged Cam rotors were simulated. First, the Lagrangian coherent structure analysis was used to understand the fluid transport properties in the mixers. Then the effect of rotational speeds (ratios) and barrel temperatures on the heat transfer characteristics in the mixers with different rotors was analyzed. Also, the changes of viscous heating and torques of rotors with different thermal conditions in the mixers were discussed. Especially, the relationship between the fluid transportation and heat transfer characteristics was explored. The results show that a big rotor speed ratio can induce great fluid transportation in the left and right mixer chambers based on the Lagrangian coherent structure analysis, and the fluid near the horseshoe map has great folding effect and temperature magnitude. The viscous dissipation, viscous heat generation, and rotor torques in the mixers increase with increasing the rotational speeds and decrease with increasing the barrel temperatures. The mixer with two-winged rotors has higher average temperature, viscous dissipation, viscous heat generation and the torques of rotors values of reactive fluid than that with single-winged rotors.