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At least 55 records · Page 3

An evaluation of analog and numerical techniques for unsteady heat transfer measurement with thin-film gauges in transient facilities

The importance of frequency response considerations in the use of thin-film gages for unsteady heat transfer measurements in transient facilities is considered, and methods for evaluating it are proposed. A departure frequency response function is introduced and illustrated by an existing analog circuit. A Fresnel integral temperature which possesses the essential features of the film temperature in transient facilities is introduced and is used to evaluate two numerical algorithms. Finally, criteria are proposed for the use of finite-difference algorithms for the calculation of the unsteady heat flux from a sampled temperature signal.

George, William K.↗

The Application of the Implicit Alternating-direction Numerical Technique to Thermal Analysis Involving Conduction and Convection

A computerized model was developed for analyzing the temperature distribution of a two dimensional body which is located at or near the soil surface and is partially exposed to solar radiation. The body may have one or more interior cavities containing air or another fluid. The methodology which evolved is also applicable to a general class of thermal analyses involving a body surrounded by a semi-infinite medium exposed to surface radiation energy. The theoretical analysis, numerical procedure, and a sample case are discussed.

Hughes, R. D.↗

A high-resolution numerical technique for inviscid gas-dynamic problems with weak solutions

The shock resolution of Harten's (1982) second-order explicit method for one-dimensional hyperbolic conservation laws is investigated for a two-dimensional gas-dynamic problem. The possible extension to a high resolution implicit method for both one- and two-dimensional problems is also investigated. Applications of Harten's method to the quasi-one-dimensional nozzle problem with two nozzle shapes (divergent and convergent-divergent) and the two-dimensional shock-reflection problem resulted in high shock resolution steady-state numerical solutions.

Yee, H. C.↗

Numerical Technique for Analyzing Rotating Rake Mode Measurements in a Duct With Passive Treatment and Shear Flow

A technique is presented for the analysis of measured data obtained from a rotating microphone rake system. The system is designed to measure the interaction modes of ducted fans. A Fourier analysis of the data from the rotating system results in a set of circumferential mode levels at each radial location of a microphone inside the duct. Radial basis functions are then least-squares fit to this data to obtain the radial mode amplitudes. For ducts with soft walls and mean flow, the radial basis functions must be numerically computed. The linear companion matrix method is used to obtain both the eigenvalues of interest, without an initial guess, and the radial basis functions. The governing equations allow for the mean flow to have a boundary layer at the wall. In addition, a nonlinear least-squares method is used to adjust the wall impedance to best fit the data in an attempt to use the rotating system as an in-duct wall impedance measurement tool. Simulated and measured data are used to show the effects of wall impedance and mean flow on the computed results.

Dahl, Milo D.↗

HYMPS: Numerical Techniques

The digital calculations that drive the classification portion of the Hybrid Pattern Recognition System (HYMPS) are considered. A revision of these calculations is suggested that involves three items: matrix inversion, det calculations and singularity, and covariance factorization. It is shown that it is more economical to first factor the covariance matrix, and by so doing, delete the matrix inversion routine. In addition, the necessary det calculations can be more easily realized by use of simple theoretical facts about the factorization.

Decell, H. P., Jr.↗

Numerical techniques for the linear, nonadiabatic stellar pulsation problem

The linear, nonadiabatic eigenvalue problem is formulated using Castor's method for calculating radial pulsations of stellar models. Both left and right eigenvectors are calculated. Initial eigenvalues for the linear, nonadiabatic solutions are obtained from the adiabatic eigenvalues and left and right eigenvectors. The orthogonality relation is obtained. Simple formulas for the Newton method are given. The iteration procedure is constrained to improve convergence. The Newton method is less satisfactory than the secant method for difficult cases. The linear, nonadiabatic solutions are shown to be sensitive to the number of zones with tau smaller than 2/3, and the value of (P/P sub r) surface or tau (surface). Optimum values can be determined for the number of zones and tau (surface). Application of the method to Population II Cepheids is briefly presented.

Bednarek, T. A.↗

Comparative study of the convergence rates of two numerical techniques

The paper examines the applicability of the three-step Stetter (1968) method to the problem of hypersonic viscous flow over a blunt axisymmetric body used for planetary entry probes at zero angle of attack. The flow-field results using the two-step finite-difference MacCormack (1969) method are reported by Kumar and Graves (1977). Only the computational efficiency of Stetter's method is compared with that of MacCormack's in terms of the iterative time steps and computing time required for the steady-state solution. Advantages of Stetter's method over MacCormack's are established.

Kumar, A.↗

Numerical techniques for large cosmological N-body simulations

Techniques for carrying out large N-body simulations of the gravitational evolution of clustering in the fundamental cube of an infinite periodic universe are described and compared. The accuracy of the forces derived from several commonly used particle mesh schemes is examined, showing how submesh resolution can be achieved by including short-range forces between particles by direct summation techniques. The time integration of the equations of motion is discussed, and the accuracy of the codes for various choices of 'time' variable and time step is tested by considering energy conservation as well as by direct analysis of particle trajectories. Methods for generating initial particle positions and velocities corresponding to a growing mode representation of a specified power spectrum of linear density fluctuations are described. The effects of force resolution are studied and different simulation schemes are compared. An algorithm is implemented for generating initial conditions by varying the number of particles, the initial amplitude of density fluctuations, and the initial peculiar velocity field.

Efstathiou, G.↗

Numerical Techniques for Scattering from Submerged Objects

To represent the final results in terms of matrices, one expands all appropriate physical quantities in terms of partial wave basis states. This includes expansions for the incident and scattered fields and the surface quantities. The method then utilizes the Huygen-Poincare integral representation for both the exterior and interior solutions, leading to the required matrix equations. One thus deals with matrix equations, the complexity of which depends on the nature of the problem. It is shown that in general a transition matrix T can be obtained relating the incident field A with the scattered field f having the form T = PQ(-1), where f = TA. The structure of Q can be quite complicated and can itself be composed of other matrix inversions such as arise from layered objects. Recent improvements in this method appropriate for a variety of physical problems are focused on, and on their implementation. Results are outlined from scattering simulations for very elongated submerged objects and resonance scattering from elastic solids and shells. The final improvement concerns eigenfunction expansions of surface terms, arising from solution of the interior problem, obtained via a preconditioning technique. This effectively reduces the problem to that of obtaining eigenvalues of a Hermitian operator. This formalism is reviewed for scattering from targets that are rigid, sound-soft, acoustic, elastic solids, elastic shells, and elastic layered objects. Two sets of the more interesting results are presented. The first concerns scattering from elongated objects, and the second to thin elastic spheroids.

Werby, M. F.↗

Efficient numerical techniques for complex fluid flows

The aim of the present research program is the development of more efficient and reliable calculation schemes for the coupled momentum and continuity equations. The resulting schemes would significantly reduce the expense of computing complex flows such as those in combustion chambers, gas turbines, and heat exchangers.

Patankar, Suhas V.↗

Efficient numerical techniques for complex fluid flows

The central feature in any flow prediction method is the treatment of the coupling between the momentum and continuity equations. In natural-convection flows, the energy equation also becomes strongly coupled with the momentum equations. Because of the nonlinear nature of the coupling, these equations are solved iteratively. Iterative methods are often prone to slow convergence, divergence, and extreme sensitivity to underrelaxation factors. The aim of the present research is to develop more efficient and reliable solution schemes for the coupled flow equations. Such schemes will significantly reduce the expense of computing complex flows encountered in combustion chambers, gas turbines, heat exchangers, and other practical equipment. In the work completed so far, a technique employing norm reduction in conjunction with the successive-substitution and Newton-Raphson techniques was developed. Also, a block-correction procedure for the flow equations is currently being formulated and tested.

Patankar, Suhas V.↗

Application of implicit numerical techniques to the solution of the three-dimensional diffusion equation

Implicit techniques for calculating three-dimensional, time-dependent heat diffusion in a cube are tested with emphasis on storage efficiency, accuracy, and speed of calculation. For this purpose, a tensor product technique with both Chebyshev collocation and finite differences and a generalized conjugate gradient technique with finite differences are used in conjunction with Crank-Nicolson discretization. An Euler explicit finite difference calculation is performed for use as a benchmark. The implicit techniques are found to be competitive with the Euler explicit method in terms of storage efficiency and speed of calculation and offer advantages both in accuracy and stability. Mesh stretching in the finite difference calculations is shown to markedly improve the accuracy of the solution.

Peltier, Leonard Joel↗

Determination of the stress distributions in a ceramic, tensile specimen using numerical techniques

Finite element analyses (FEA) were used to determine the stress distributions in a ceramic, tensile specimen with two types of button-head gripping systems. The FEA revealed stress raisers at both the button-head and the transition from the gage section to the shank. However, the stress field within the bulk of the gage section is uniform and uniaxial. The stress ratio, kt, between the button-head and gage section stresses varied from 0.35 to 0.72 for the tapered collet or the straight collet systems, respectively. Previous empirical tests confirm these results whereby the tapered collet system, compared to the straight collet system, sustained over twice the average load before failure at the button-head.

Jenkins, M. E.↗

A critical analysis of the accuracy of several numerical techniques for combustion kinetic rate equations

A detailed analysis of the accuracy of several techniques recently developed for integrating stiff ordinary differential equations is presented. The techniques include two general-purpose codes EPISODE and LSODE developed for an arbitrary system of ordinary differential equations, and three specialized codes CHEMEQ, CREK1D, and GCKP4 developed specifically to solve chemical kinetic rate equations. The accuracy study is made by application of these codes to two practical combustion kinetics problems. Both problems describe adiabatic, homogeneous, gas-phase chemical reactions at constant pressure, and include all three combustion regimes: induction, heat release, and equilibration. To illustrate the error variation in the different combustion regimes the species are divided into three types (reactants, intermediates, and products), and error versus time plots are presented for each species type and the temperature. These plots show that CHEMEQ is the most accurate code during induction and early heat release. During late heat release and equilibration, however, the other codes are more accurate. A single global quantity, a mean integrated root-mean-square error, that measures the average error incurred in solving the complete problem is used to compare the accuracy of the codes. Among the codes examined, LSODE is the most accurate for solving chemical kinetics problems. It is also the most efficient code, in the sense that it requires the least computational work to attain a specified accuracy level. An important finding is that use of the algebraic enthalpy conservation equation to compute the temperature can be more accurate and efficient than integrating the temperature differential equation.

Radhadrishnan, Krishnan↗