Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Volume of fluid”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Integration of Biorelevant Pediatric Dissolution Methodology into PBPK Modeling to Predict In Vivo Performance and Bioequivalence of Generic Drugs in Pediatric Populations: a Carbamazepine Case Study

This study investigated the impact of gastro-intestinal fluid volume and bile salt (BS) concentration on the dissolution of carbamazepine (CBZ) immediate release (IR) 100 mg tablets and to integrate these in vitro biorelevant dissolution profiles into physiologically based pharmacokinetic modelling (PBPK) in pediatric and adult populations to determine the biopredictive dissolution profile. Dissolution profiles of CBZ IR tablets (100 mg) were generated in 50–900 mL biorelevant adult fasted state simulated gastric and intestinal fluid (Ad-FaSSGF and Ad-FaSSIF), also in three alternative compositions of biorelevant pediatric FaSSGF and FaSSIF medias at 200 mL. This study found that CBZ dissolution was poorly sensitive to changes in the composition of the biorelevant media, where dissimilar dissolution (F2 = 46.2) was only observed when the BS concentration was changed from 3000 to 89 μM (Ad-FaSSIF vs Ped-FaSSIF 50% 14 BS). PBPK modeling demonstrated the most predictive dissolution volume and media composition to forecast the PK was 500 mL of Ad-FaSSGF/Ad-FaSSIF media for adults and 200 mL Ped-FaSSGF/FaSSIF media for pediatrics. A virtual bioequivalence simulation was conducted by using Ad-FaSSGF and/or Ad-FaSSIF 500 mL or Ped-FaSSGF and/or Ped-FaSSIF 200 mL dissolution data for CBZ 100 mg (reference and generic test) IR product. The CBZ PBPK models showed bioequivalence of the product. This study demonstrates that the integration of biorelevant dissolution data can predict the PK profile of a poorly soluble drug in both populations. Further work using more pediatric drug products is needed to verify biorelevant dissolution data to predict the in vivo performance in pediatrics.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

High Performance Adaptive Physics Refinement to Enable Large-Scale Tracking of Cancer Cell Trajectory

The ability to track simulated cancer cells through the circulatory system, important for developing a mechanistic understanding of metastatic spread, pushes the limits of today's supercomputers by requiring the simulation of large fluid volumes at cellular-scale resolution. To overcome this challenge, we introduce a new adaptive physics refinement (APR) method that captures cellular-scale interaction across large domains and leverages a hybrid CPU-GPU approach to maximize performance. Through algorithmic advances that integrate multi-physics and multi-resolution models, we establish a finely resolved window with explicitly modeled cells coupled to a coarsely resolved bulk fluid domain. In this work we present multiple validations of the APR framework by comparing against fully resolved fluid-structure interaction methods and employ techniques, such as latency hiding and maximizing memory bandwidth, to effectively utilize heterogeneous node architectures. Collectively, these computational developments and performance optimizations provide a robust and scalable framework to enable system-level simulations of cancer cell transport.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Impact of Concurrent Solubilization and Fines Migration on Fracture Aperture Growth in Shales during Acidized Brine Injection

Acidic hydraulic fracturing fluid chemically and physically alters shale rock fabric during injection and shut-in, creating a “reaction-altered zone” along the fracture faces. To better characterize the variable thickness and composition of this reaction-altered zone under advective flow, we take a coupled experimental and modeling approach. A fluidic cell, with six fiducial markers, is first fabricated to keep the rock sample in place during the core floods and to allow image alignment of acquired images. Then, we conduct a series of reactive core floods in a clay-rich siliceous Wolfcamp shale sample with 10 wt % carbonate, using a synthetic fracturing fluid under no confining stress and at room temperature. High-resolution computed tomography (CT) scans are periodically conducted to observe the spatial alteration of the fracture network. We then perform scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDS) on the two orthogonal surfaces (fracture surface and freshly cut profile face) to generate high-resolution elemental maps that show the change in mineralogy, both with distance along a given flow path along a fracture surface and with depth from the fracture surface into the shale matrix. These results are contrasted against a two-dimensional (2D) advection-diffusion reaction model developed previously for batch reactions between shale and synthetic fracturing fluids. The model simulates the geochemical interaction occurring at the fracture/matrix interface and penetrating into the shale matrix during the reactive core flood. Both model and experimental results show that the acidic brine is neutralized during the core flood, corresponding to an increase in fracture aperture as a function of fluid volume injected with the greatest change near the inlet. SEM-EDS scans reveal significant dissolution of carbonates on the fracture surface without pyrite oxidation. The reactive transport model indicates that carbonate depletion into the shale interior should be observable, yet SEM-EDS shows no discernible loss of carbonate in the orthogonal profile face. The combination of these observations suggests an additional fracture evolution mechanism in the reactive system, i.e., fines migration. We show that fines migration enhances the access of fracturing fluid to the matrix resulting in a more pronounced fracture widening. Finally, we conclude that coupled mineral dissolution and fines migration govern fracture aperture growth during acidized brine injection. In this work, we effectively show the underlying risk of relying solely on models that do not include an important (transport) process that can alter the system significantly and propose a combined chemomechanical mechanism for fracture evolution appropriate for this shale mineralogy.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Microseismic Monitoring of Laboratory Hydraulic Fracturing Experiments in Granitic Rocks for Different Fracture Propagation Regimes

While hydraulic fracturing (HF) is a widely employed process, the underlying fracturing processes are still heavily contested. The attributes of the HF generated fracture network can exhibit substantial variation when dealing with specific HF propagation regimes encountered in the field. In this study, HF experiments were performed on true-triaxially loaded Barre granite cubes, with microseismic monitoring, to identify and characterize the fracturing mechanisms associated with different viscosity injection fluids. Utilizing fluids with high (oil/1450 cP) and low (water/1 cP) viscosity represented two key HF propagation regimes: viscosity- and toughness-dominated. The experiments conducted with oil involved higher breakdown pressures, larger fluid volumes, and slower fracture propagation speeds. Furthermore, the frequency–magnitude distribution (b value) for all experiments (1.9–2.3) was similar to those encountered for large-scale operations. Slightly larger b values were encountered during the initiation phase (2.4–2.7) relative to the fracture propagation and post-fracturing phases (1.9–2.2). Techniques such as polarity and moment-tensor inversion were utilized to characterize the source mechanisms. For the HF experiments with oil, tensile fractures were most dominant (92%) in the initiation phase compared to fracture propagation and post-fracturing phases (70–75%). Similar tensile fracturing dominancy was not observed with water, attributable to fluid permeation and leak-off. Regardless of the injection fluid or classification criteria employed, tensile fractures were the dominant type consistently, with fewer occurring in water experiments but the specific ratio of crack types varied with different source mechanism criteria employed.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Overcoming the sensitivity vs. throughput tradeoff in Coulter counters: A novel side counter design

We report microfabricated Coulter counters are attractive for point of care (POC) applications since they are label free and compact. However, these approaches inherently suffer from a trade off between sample throughput and sensitivity. The counter measures a change in impedance due to displaced fluid volume by passing cells, and thus the counter's signal increases with the fraction of the sensing volume displaced. Reducing the size of the sensing region requires reductions in volumetric throughput in the absence of increased hydraulic pressure and sensor bandwidth. The risk of mechanical clog formation, rendering the counter inoperable, increases markedly with reductions in the size of the constriction aperture. We present here a microfluidic coplanar Coulter counter device design that overcomes the problem of constriction clogging while capable of operating in microfluidic channels filled entirely with highly conductive sample. The device utilizes microfabricated planar electrodes projecting into one side of the microfluidic channel and is easily integrated with upstream electronic, hydrodynamic, or other focusing units to produce efficient counting which could allow for dramatically increased volumetric and sample throughput. The design lends itself to simple, cost effective POC applications.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Growth-induced Donnan exclusion influences swelling kinetics in highly charged dynamic polymerization hydrogels

Polymeric gels crosslinked by DNA sequences can exploit DNA strand-displacement reactions to promote swelling through dynamic polymerization. The degree of swelling and the rate of swelling must be directly tunable to achieve the promise of programmable soft matter. Though the kinetics of the strand-displacement reaction provide insertion rates up to 10 4 /Molar/second as measured in bulk solution, DNA hydrogel swelling can take upwards of 30 h to complete. Computational modeling of the reaction-induced swelling of these gels with our recently-developed reactive electrochemomechanical theory (Zimmerman et al., 2024) suggests that their extraordinarily slow swelling is partly due to a scaling mismatch between the addition of charge and the addition of fluid volume, leading to a large transient increase in the fixed charge density. The significant increase in the gel’s fixed charge density, due to the binding of negatively charged DNA, sharply restricts the concentration of mobile hairpins through the phenomenon of Donnan charge exclusion, an effect commonly exploited in nanofiltration applications using polymeric membranes. The scaling problem is overcome when the mean additional swelling provided to the hydrogel by addition of a crosslink is above a critical value, thus the swelling outpaces the charge accumulation, leading the fixed charge density to drop and significantly accelerating the swelling process. This study shows that Donnan exclusion can explain the kinetics of DNA hydrogel swelling, and studies ways to modulate the reaction speed by either modifying the salt concentration or increasing or decreasing the number of base pairs in each DNA sequence.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Translating nanoparticle dosimetry from conventional in vitro systems to occupational inhalation exposures

As encouraged by Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century, researchers increasingly apply high-throughput in vitro approaches to identify and characterize nanoparticle hazards, including conventional aqueous cell culture systems to assess respiratory hazards. Translating nanoparticle dose from conventional toxicity testing systems to relevant human exposures remains a major challenge for assessing occupational risk of nanoparticle exposures. Here, we explored existing computational tools and data available to translate nanoparticle dose metrics from cellular test systems to inhalation exposures of silver nanoparticles in humans. We used the Multiple-Path Particle Dosimetry (MPPD) Model to predict deposition of humans exposed to 20 and 110 nm silver nanoparticles at 0.9 µg/m3 over an 8 hr period, the proposed a National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommended exposure limit (REL). MPPD predicts 1.88 and 0.98 µg of silver deposited in an 8 hr period for 20 and 110 nm nanoparticles, respectively, with 20 nm particles displaying nearly 11-fold higher total surface area deposited. Peak nanoparticle concentrations occurred more proximal in the pulmonary tract compared to mass deposition patterns (generation 5 vs. generations 20-21, respectively) due to regional differences in lung lining fluid volumes. Assuming 0.4% nanoparticle dissolution by mass as previously measured, we predict peak concentrations of silver ions in cells of 0.24 and 0.17 µg/mL for 20 and 110 nm particles, respectively. Both predicted concentrations are below the measured toxic threshold of 1.7 µg/mL of silver ions in cells from in vitro assessments. Assuming 4% dissolution by mass, we predict 10-fold higher silver concentrations in tissues, peaking at 2.4 and 1.7 µg/mL, for 20 and 110 nm nanoparticles respectively, exceeding the observed in vitro toxic threshold and highlighting the importance and sensitivity of dissolution rates. Overall, this approach offers a framework for extrapolating nanotoxicity results from in vitro cell culture systems to human exposures. Aligning appropriate dose metrics from in vitro and in vivo hazard characterizations and human pulmonary doses from occupational exposures are critical components for successful nanoparticle risk assessment and worker protection and provide guidance for designing future in vitro studies aimed at relevant human exposures.

Smith, Jordan N.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Simple Heat Pipe Model

This is a simple model designed to run fast but still maintain the key physics and feedback mechanisms of a heat pipe. First, the capillary pressure is a function of the liquid working fluid volume fraction. Second, the boiling and condensation are based on the saturation temperature that is based on the heat pipe pressure. When the pressure goes up, the saturation temperature goes up and the vapor rains on the wick. When the pressure goes down, the saturation temperature goes down and the liquid in the entire wick boils. This is how the heat pipe adjusts to stay robust under different temperatures and heat fluxes.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Interpreting strain tensor data to characterize and monitor reservoirs for CO2 storage and other applications

Recent advances in instrumentation have made it feasible to measure the transient strain tensor caused by small changes in fluid volume or pressure in the subsurface and this has opened the door to new opportunities for characterization and monitoring. We have deployed strainmeters and then conducted injection well tests in an underlying reservoir at 530m depth. The resulting data indicated that the horizontal strain at shallow strainmeters (30 to 40m depth) was tensile and the vertical strain was compressive. The radial strain was less than the horizontal strain, and the strain rates decreased from 100 nanostrain/day to roughly 10 n/d over a few days. The signal at two strainmeters at shallow depth were consistent, although the magnitude of the horizontal strains were different reflecting the different radial directions from the well. The signal at a deep strainmeter deployed at reservoir depth was much different, with tensile vertical strains and compressive horizontal strains. These data can be interpreted by inverting poroelastic forward models developed using numerical and analytical methods. The average horizontal strain in the caprock resembles the transient pressure in the underlying reservoir and classic type-curve methods from transient well testing can be used for preliminary interpretations of strain data. We have developed closed-form analytical solutions to a pressurized poroelastic inclusion and inhomogeneity in a half-space. This model is fast and can be inverted to estimate reservoir stiffness and geometry. Numerical models developed using finite element methods allow more details of the subsurface to be included in the inversion, but they require much longer run times and this makes inversion cumbersome using standard methods. We have developed an inversion approach that uses a proxy model created using machine learning to do most of the forward calculations. The proxy model is periodically updated and refined using the finite element model to ensure accuracy. This approach significantly reduces the computational requirements and makes it feasible to use Bayesian inversion with large numerical models. We have shown that the strain tensor in the caprock is sensitive to pressure in the reservoir, boundaries in the reservoir, and pressure in the caprock caused by leaks. These results indicate that coupling strain tensor data with inversion has the potential to help evaluate reservoirs during initial characterization, and to monitor them during the CO2 injection and storage process.

Murdoch, Larry↗
DOE OSTI2021

Evaluating proxies for the drivers of natural gas productivity using machine-learning models

We report the extensive development of unconventional reservoirs using horizontal drilling and multistage hydraulic fracturing has generated large volumes of reservoir characterization and production data. The analysis of this abundant data using statistical methods and advanced machine-learning (ML) techniques can provide data-driven insights into well performance. Most predictive modeling studies have focused on the impact that different well completion and stimulation strategies have on well production but have not fully exploited the available in situ rock property data to determine its role in reservoir productivity. We have used machine-learning techniques to rank rock mechanical properties, microseismic attributes, and stimulation parameters in the order of their significance for predicting natural gas production from an unconventional reservoir. The data for this study came from a hydraulically fractured well in the Marcellus Shale in Monongalia County, West Virginia. The data classes included measurements aggregated by well completion stage that included (1) gas production, (2) well-log-derived measurements including bulk density, elastic moduli, shear impedance, compressional impedance, brittleness, and gamma measurements, (3) microseismic attributes, (4) long-period long-duration (LPLD) event counts, (5) fracture counts, and (6) stimulation parameters that included the fluid injection volume and average pumping pressure. To identify observable proxies for the drivers of gas production, we evaluated five commonly used ML approaches including multivariate adaptive regression spline, Gaussian mixture model, random forest, gradient boosting, and neural network. We selected five variables including LPLD event count, seismogenic b-value, hydraulic diffusivity, cumulative moment, and fluid volume as the features most likely to impact gas productivity at the stage level in the study area. The data-driven selection of these parameters for their importance in determining gas production can help reservoir engineers design more effective hydraulic-fracture treatments in the Marcellus Shale and other similar unconventional reservoirs. Plain language summary: We use machine-learning methods and data-driven selection of reservoir parameters to rank and better understand their importance in determining gas production, which can help reservoir engineers design more effective hydraulic-fracture treatments in the Marcellus Shale and other similar unconventional reservoirs.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

A Finite Element Method for Compressible and Turbulent Multiphase Flow Instabilities with Heat Transfer

We present a new finite element framework for modeling compressible, turbulent multiphase flows with heat transfer. For two-fluid systems with a free surface, the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is implemented without the need for interface reconstruction, while turbulence is resolved using a dynamic Vreman large eddy simulation (LES) model. Unlike most two-phase VOF studies, which neglect heat transfer, the present approach incorporates energy transport equations within the VOF formulation to account for heat exchange, an effect particularly important in turbulent flows. Conjugate heat transfer is often challenging in finite volume methods, which require explicit specification of heat fluxes at the solid–fluid interface, limiting accuracy and predictive capability. By contrast, the finite element formulation does not require heat flux inputs, allowing more accurate and robust simulation of heat transfer between solids and fluids. The method is demonstrated through three representative cases. First, a two-fluid instability with a single-mode perturbation is simulated and validated against analytical growth rates. Second, conjugate heat transfer is examined in a high-temperature flow over a cold metal cylinder, with validation performed both quantitatively—via pressure coefficient comparisons with experimental data—and qualitatively using vector field topology. Finally, compressible spray injection and breakup are modeled, demonstrating the ability of the framework to capture interfacial dynamics and atomization under turbulent, high-speed conditions. In the compressible spray injection and breakup case, the results indicate that the finite element formulation achieved higher predictive accuracy and robustness than the finite-volume method. With the same mesh resolution, the FEM reduced the root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) from 6.96 mm and 26.0% (for the FVM) to 4.85 mm and 12.7%, respectively, demonstrating improved accuracy and robustness in capturing interfacial dynamics and heat transfer. The study also introduced vector field topology to visualize and interpret coherent flow structures and instabilities, offering insights beyond conventional scalar-field analyses.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

High-Speed and High-Quality Field Welding Repair Based on Advanced Non-Destructive Evaluation and Numerical Modeling

Creep strength-enhanced ferritic (CSEF) steels such as Grade 91 (9Cr-1Mo-V) and Grade 92 (Fe-9Cr-2W-0.5Mo) steels are widely used in the fossil-fuel-fired and nuclear power plants. The weld integrity of these steels is crucial for power plants' safe and reliable operations. Due to harsh service conditions, the steel weld can become susceptible to environmental degradation. Field welding repair is used to restore the degraded weld’s performance where a controlled temper-bead welding technique is commonly used to temper the freshly formed martensite during welding. However, knowledge of weld repairability is limited and experimental trial and error optimization to achieve desired microstructure and joint properties is expensive and time-consuming. Many existing computational models, e.g., finite element models, are limited to solving heat conduction equation and ignoring convective heat transfer due to molten metal flow. These models can result in over-prediction of peak temperatures of weld pool and heat-affected zone (HAZ), which in turn can affect the accuracy of tempering prediction. Moreover, these finite element models require an input of the deposit profiles in advance and thus limits the usability of these models. Here, a molten pool-based, multi-pass multi-layer model has been developed based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach with the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method. The model calculates the bead formation, thereby eliminating the need for pre-determined bead profiles required by finite element models. For computational efficiency, a coordinate system attached to the moving heat source is utilized. A subroutine is developed to convert the temperature profiles in the reference frame stationary to the heat source to that stationary to the workpiece. The converted thermal cycles are then imported into a microstructure model to compute the tempering kinetics and resultant hardness using a Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Kolmogorov (JMAK), and modified Grange-Baughman parameter. The modeling approach is first developed and validated on single- and multi-pass deposition of stainless steel filler metal onto a SA-533 high strength steel substrate. The models are then applied to a multi-pass V-groove repair weld of Grade 91 steel plate as well as directed energy deposition of Grade 92 steel. Non-destructive characterization of microstructures was performed on Grade 91 and 92 steel welds. Two welding processes, cold metal transfer (CMT) and flux-cored arc welding (FCAW), were investigated for the Grade 91 steel weld samples. For the Grade 92 weld samples, three different heat inputs (low, medium, and high) of gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) were utilized to replicate traditional field welding processes. The non-destructive evaluation (NDE) method used for this research was immersion ultrasonic testing (UT) using a micro-resolution ultrasonic imaging methodology specifically designed to operate in the through-transmission configuration operating at 20 MHz of frequency. The system used a focused ultrasonic beam spot size diameter between 250-300 μm, and a 6 μm laser vibrometer spot size for detection, to produce highly defined images with longitudinal and mode-converted shear waves. From the micro-resolution ultrasonic C-scan images, three microstructural regions, i.e., weld metal (WM), HAZ, and base metal (BM), were clearly identifiable. Various levels of ultrasonic amplitudes distributed over the three regions were correlated with electron beam backscattered diffraction (EBSD) images using grain size, grain boundaries, and dislocation densities. The results showed that areas with relatively higher ultrasonic amplitude levels were associated with smaller grains and higher dislocation densities, while areas with lower amplitude levels were associated with larger grains and lower dislocation densities. In addition, ultrasonic velocity data obtained across the three different weld microstructural regions of Grade 91 test samples were correlated with optical metallographic images and hardness measurements. The results showed distinctive decreases in ultrasonic velocity and hardness over the HAZ region, where weld failures often occur during service.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Split heating and cooling systems

The present disclosure relates to air conditioning systems and methods. An aspect of the present disclosure is a device that includes a housing having an external surface and defining an interior volume, a heat exchanger positioned within the interior volume, a fluid line partially positioned within the interior volume, a sleeve extending from the external surface and terminating at a distal end of the sleeve, and a fluid connector. The sleeve has an outside wall spanning a length of the sleeve and defining an internal cavity, the fluid connector is positioned at or near the distal end, a portion of the fluid line is positioned within the internal cavity, and the fluid line provides a fluid connection between the heat exchanger and the fluid connector.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Breakup dynamics in a pressure-swirl injector for urea-water solution applications: A computational study

The co-optimization of in-cylinder combustion and after-treatment technology has become a major aspect in engine design and development, with the goal of meeting the increasingly restrictive emission regulations in the transportation industry. Selective Catalytic Reduction is a robust technology to control the emission of NO x , and the injection of urea in water solution is the exhaust tailpipe is a key aspect of its operation. The proposed work uses high-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics to characterize the atomization dynamics of the liquid jet in relevant cross-flow conditions. The study focuses on a commercial low-pressure (9 bar) pressure-swirl injector which is characterized in its internal geometry through high-resolution X-ray micro-computational tomography. The internal two-phase flow has been modeled according to the volume-of-fluid approach in a large eddy simulation framework and validated against near-nozzle X-ray radiography measurement. Moreover, characterizing the breakup dynamics for the swirling hollow cone formation, and assessing the influence of the cross-flow in the breakup dynamics was completed. The results have been reported proposing Re-Oh maps and probability density functions of the spray kinematics. Higher cross-flow momentum generates an increase in the jet intact length and a reduction of the liquid droplet diameters. The axial momentum of the jet is affected by the cross-flow already in the near-nozzle region, determining a relevant deviation of the spray velocities. In conclusion, this work aims to inform the initialization of Eulerian-Lagrangian spray models through the assignment of droplet kinematics and static one-way coupling between volume-of-fluid results and Lagrangian spray parcels, to be used for system-size domain simulations.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2022

A mass–momentum consistent coupling for mesh-adaptive two-phase flow simulations

Here, we present a novel mass-momentum consistent coupling between a geometric volume-of-fluid scheme and an incompressible flow solver with differing directional-splitting approaches. The advection of the volume fraction is performed using a direction-split algorithm, whereas the momentum advection algorithm uses a traditional unsplit, fractional-step approach. Both algorithms employ finite-volume discretizations based on Cartesian meshes. In solving the mass-momentum consistency problem, momentum fluxes at the cell faces are weighted by the density fluxes based on the already advected volume fraction. The success of our approach lies on introducing a Favre-averaged velocity interpolation at the liquid/gas interface along with a minmod slope limiter. Mesh-convergence studies show that when the minmod slope limiter is used, the two-phase solver retains an accuracy between first and second order, but when a purely upwind scheme is considered, its accuracy drops to first order. Finally, after considering several validation problems, the solver is shown to agree well with reference numerical and experimental data while retaining its robustness and efficiency.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Truchas-Flow

The truchas flow algorithm is designed for simulating the behavior of incompressible (but not necessarily constant density) fluids on unstructured meshes while allowing for solid and void phases to serve as moving boundaries. The interface between fluids, solids and void is tracked via a geometric volume of fluid approach. This allows for a single fluid formulation of the governing equations.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

CFD simulations of electric motor end ring cooling for improved thermal management

Proper thermal management of an electric motor for vehicle applications extends its operating range. One cooling approach is to impinge Automatic Transmission Fluid (ATF) onto the rotor end ring. Increased ATF coverage correlates to enhanced heat transfer. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analytical tools provide a mechanism to assess motor thermal management prior to hardware fabrication. The complexity of the fluid flow (e.g., jet atomization, interface tracking, wall impingement) and heat transfer makes these simulations challenging. Computational costs are high when solving these flows on high-speed rotating meshes. Typically, a Volume-of Fluid (VOF) technique (i.e., two-fluid system) is used to resolve ATF dynamics within this rotating framework. Suitable numerical resolution of the relevant physics for thin films under strong inertial forces at high rotor speeds is computationally expensive, further increasing the run times. In this work, a numerical study of rotor-ring cooling by ATF is presented using a patent automated Cartesian cut-cell based method coupled with Automatic Mesh Refinement (AMR). This approach automatically creates the Cartesian mesh on-the-fly and can effectively handle complex rotating geometries by adaptively refining the mesh based on local gradients in the flow field which results in better resolution of the air-ATF interface. A Single non-inertial Reference Frame (SRF) approach is used to account for the rotating geometry and to further improve the overall computational efficiency. Quasi-steady state conditions are targeted in the analysis of the results. Important physics such as ATF jet structure, velocity detail near the air-jet interface, ATF coverage/accumulation on the ring surface, and cooling capacity are presented for a low-resolution Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS), high-resolution RANS, and high-resolution Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) models. Computations are scaled over hundreds of cores on a supercomputer to maximize turnaround time. Each numerical approach is shown to capture the general trajectory of the oil jet prior to surface impingement. The high-resolution LES simulation, however, is superior in capturing small scale details and heat transfer between the free jet and surrounding air.

42 ENGINEERING↗