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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.

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At least 1,207 records · Page 67
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2014

Self-consistent fluid modeling and simulation on a pulsed microwave atmospheric-pressure argon plasma jet

In present study, a pulsed lower-power microwave-driven atmospheric-pressure argon plasma jet has been introduced with the type of coaxial transmission line resonator. The plasma jet plume is with room air temperature, even can be directly touched by human body without any hot harm. In order to study ionization process of the proposed plasma jet, a self-consistent hybrid fluid model is constructed in which Maxwell's equations are solved numerically by finite-difference time-domain method and a fluid model is used to study the characteristics of argon plasma evolution. With a Guass type input power function, the spatio-temporal distributions of the electron density, the electron temperature, the electric field, and the absorbed power density have been simulated, respectively. The simulation results suggest that the peak values of the electron temperature and the electric field are synchronous with the input pulsed microwave power but the maximum quantities of the electron density and the absorbed power density are lagged to the microwave power excitation. In addition, the pulsed plasma jet excited by the local enhanced electric field of surface plasmon polaritons should be the discharge mechanism of the proposed plasma jet.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2014

The stochastic dynamics of tethered microcantilevers in a viscous fluid

We explore and quantify the coupled dynamics of a pair of micron scale cantilevers immersed in a viscous fluid that are also directly tethered to one another at their tips by a spring force. The spring force, for example, could represent the molecular stiffness or elasticity of a biomolecule or material tethered between the cantilevers. We use deterministic numerical simulations with the fluctuation-dissipation theorem to compute the stochastic dynamics of the cantilever pair for the conditions of experiment when driven only by Brownian motion. We validate our approach by comparing directly with experimental measurements in the absence of the tether which shows excellent agreement. Using numerical simulations, we quantify the correlated dynamics of the cantilever pair over a range of tether stiffness. Our results quantify the sensitivity of the auto- and cross-correlations of equilibrium fluctuations in cantilever displacement to the stiffness of the tether. We show that the tether affects the magnitude of the correlations which can be used in a measurement to probe the properties of an attached tethering substance. For the configurations of current interest using micron scale cantilevers in water, we show that the magnitude of the fluid coupling between the cantilevers is sufficiently small such that the influence of the tether can be significant. Our results show that the cross-correlation is more sensitive to tether stiffness than the auto-correlation indicating that a two-cantilever measurement has improved sensitivity when compared with a measurement using a single cantilever.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2014

Thermal diffusion segregation of an impurity in a driven granular fluid

We study segregation of an impurity in a driven granular fluid under two types of steady states. In the first state, the granular gas is driven by a stochastic volume force field with a Fourier-type profile while in the second state, the granular gas is sheared in such a way that inelastic cooling is balanced by viscous heating. We compare theoretical results derived from a solution of the (inelastic) Boltzmann equation at Navier-Stokes (NS) order with those obtained from the Direct Monte Carlo simulation (DSMC) method and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Good agreement is found between theory and simulation, which provides strong evidence of the reliability of NS granular hydrodynamics for these steady states (including the dynamics of the impurity), even at high inelasticity. In addition, preliminary results for thermal diffusion in granular fluids at moderate densities are also presented. As for dilute gases, excellent agreement is also found in this more general case.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

A comparison of molecular dynamics and diffuse interface model predictions of Lennard-Jones fluid evaporation

The unsteady evaporation of a thin planar liquid film is studied by molecular dynamics simulations of Lennard-Jones fluid. The obtained results are compared with the predictions of a diffuse interface model in which capillary Korteweg contributions are added to hydrodynamic equations, in order to obtain a unified description of the liquid bulk, liquid-vapor interface and vapor region. Particular care has been taken in constructing a diffuse interface model matching the thermodynamic and transport properties of the Lennard-Jones fluid. The comparison of diffuse interface model and molecular dynamics results shows that, although good agreement is obtained in equilibrium conditions, remarkable deviations of diffuse interface model predictions from the reference molecular dynamics results are observed in the simulation of liquid film evaporation. It is also observed that molecular dynamics results are in good agreement with preliminary results obtained from a composite model which describes the liquid film by a standard hydrodynamic model and the vapor by the Boltzmann equation. The two mathematical model models are connected by kinetic boundary conditions assuming unit evaporation coefficient.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2015

Fluid model of the sheath in front of a floating electrode immersed in a magnetized plasma with oblique magnetic field: Some comments on ion source terms and ion temperature effects

A one-dimensional fluid model of the magnetized plasma-wall transition region in front of a floating electrode immersed in a magnetized plasma with oblique magnetic field is presented. The Boltzmann relation is assumed for the electrons, while the positive ions obey the ion continuity and momentum exchange equation. The ions are assumed to be isothermal. By comparison with a two-fluid model, it is shown that assuming the Boltzmann relation for the electrons implies that there is no creation or annihilation of the electrons. Consequently, there should not be any creation and annihilation of the positive ions either. The models that assume the Boltzmann relation for the electrons and a non-zero ion source term at the same time are therefore inconsistent, but such models have nevertheless been used extensively by many authors. So, in this work, an extensive comparison of the results obtained using the zero source term on one hand and three different non-zero source terms on the other hand is made. Four different ion source terms are considered in total: the zero source term and three different non-zero ion source terms. When the zero source term is used, the model becomes very sensitive to the boundary conditions, and in some cases, the solutions exhibit large amplitude oscillations. If any of the three non-zero ion source terms is used, those problems are eliminated, but also the consistency of the model is broken. The model equations are solved numerically in the entire magnetized plasma-wall transition region. For zero ion temperature, the model can be solved even if a very small ion velocity is selected as a boundary condition. For finite ion temperature, the system of equations becomes stiff, unless the ion velocity at the boundary is increased slightly above the ion thermal velocity. A simple method how to find a solution with a very small ion velocity at the boundary also for finite ion temperature in the entire magnetized plasma-wall transition region is proposed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Burst design and signal processing for the speed of sound measurement of fluids with the pulse-echo technique

The pulse-echo technique determines the propagation time of acoustic wave bursts in a fluid over a known propagation distance. It is limited by the signal quality of the received echoes of the acoustic wave bursts, which degrades with decreasing density of the fluid due to acoustic impedance and attenuation effects. Signal sampling is significantly improved in this work by burst design and signal processing such that a wider range of thermodynamic states can be investigated. Applying a Fourier transformation based digital filter on acoustic wave signals increases their signal-to-noise ratio and enhances their time and amplitude resolutions, improving the overall measurement accuracy. In addition, burst design leads to technical advantages for determining the propagation time due to the associated conditioning of the echo. It is shown that the according operation procedure enlarges the measuring range of the pulse-echo technique for supercritical argon and nitrogen at 300 K down to 5 MPa, where it was limited to around 20 MPa before.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2015

Note on one-fluid modeling of low-frequency Alfvénic fluctuations in a solar wind plasma with multi-ion components

A simple point of view that non-zero Alfvén ratio (residual energy) appears as a consequence of one-fluid modeling of uni-directional Alfvén waves in a solar wind plasma is presented. Since relative speeds among ions are incorporated into the one-fluid model as a pressure anisotropy, the Alfvén ratio can be finite due to the decrease in the phase velocity. It is shown that a proton beam component typically found in the solar wind plasma can contribute to generating non-zero Alfvén ratio observed in the solar wind plasma. Local equilibrium velocity distribution functions of each ion component are also discussed by using maximum entropy principle.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

A volatile fluid assisted thermo-pneumatic liquid metal energy harvester

A close-cycle self-driving thermal energy harvester using liquid metal as energy carrier fluid has been proposed. The driving force that pushes the liquid metal against flow resistance and gravity is provided by a resistively heated volatile fluid based on thermo-pneumatic principle. The tested harvester prototype demonstrated its capability to extract thermal energy between small temperature gradient, at a scale of 10 °C. During a 5-h operation, it further demonstrated robust liquid metal recirculating performance at a time-average volume flow rate of 14 ml/min with a 12.25 W heating load. The prototype also managed to self-adjust to variable working conditions which indicated the reliability of this method. Advantages of this method include simple-structural design, rigid-motion free operation, and low-temperature actuation. These advantages make it uniquely suited for solar energy and low-grade heat harvesting, high heat flux electronics cooling, as well as autonomous machines actuating.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2016

Sub- and super-luminar propagation of structures satisfying Poynting-like theorem for incompressible generalized hydrodynamic fluid model depicting strongly coupled dusty plasma medium

The strongly coupled dusty plasma has often been modelled by the Generalized Hydrodynamic (GHD) model used for representing visco-elastic fluid systems. The incompressible limit of the model which supports transverse shear wave mode is studied in detail. In particular, dipole structures are observed to emit transverse shear waves in both the limits of sub- and super-luminar propagation, where the structures move slower and faster than the phase velocity of the shear waves, respectively. In the sub-luminar limit the dipole gets engulfed within the shear waves emitted by itself, which then backreacts on it and ultimately the identity of the structure is lost. However, in the super-luminar limit the emission appears like a wake from the tail region of the dipole. The dipole, however, keeps propagating forward with little damping but minimal distortion in its form. A Poynting-like conservation law with radiative, convective, and dissipative terms being responsible for the evolution of W, which is similar to “enstrophy” like quantity in normal hydrodynamic fluid systems, has also been constructed for the incompressible GHD equations. The conservation law is shown to be satisfied in all the cases of evolution and collision amidst the nonlinear structures to a great accuracy. It is shown that monopole structures which do not move at all but merely radiate shear waves, the radiative term, and dissipative losses solely contribute to the evolution of W. The dipolar structures, on the other hand, propagate in the medium and hence convection also plays an important role in the evolution of W.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Evaluation of the grand-canonical partition function using expanded Wang-Landau simulations. IV. Performance of many-body force fields and tight-binding schemes for the fluid phases of silicon

We extend Expanded Wang-Landau (EWL) simulations beyond classical systems and develop the EWL method for systems modeled with a tight-binding Hamiltonian. We then apply the method to determine the partition function and thus all thermodynamic properties, including the Gibbs free energy and entropy, of the fluid phases of Si. We compare the results from quantum many-body (QMB) tight binding models, which explicitly calculate the overlap between the atomic orbitals of neighboring atoms, to those obtained with classical many-body (CMB) force fields, which allow to recover the tetrahedral organization in condensed phases of Si through, e.g., a repulsive 3-body term that favors the ideal tetrahedral angle. Along the vapor-liquid coexistence, between 3000 K and 6000 K, the densities for the two coexisting phases are found to vary significantly (by 5 orders of magnitude for the vapor and by up to 25% for the liquid) and to provide a stringent test of the models. Transitions from vapor to liquid are predicted to occur for chemical potentials that are 10%–15% higher for CMB models than for QMB models, and a ranking of the force fields is provided by comparing the predictions for the vapor pressure to the experimental data. QMB models also reveal the formation of a gap in the electronic density of states of the coexisting liquid at high temperatures. Subjecting Si to a nanoscopic confinement has a dramatic effect on the phase diagram with, e.g. at 6000 K, a decrease in liquid densities by about 50% for both CMB and QMB models and an increase in vapor densities between 90% (CMB) and 170% (QMB). The results presented here provide a full picture of the impact of the strategy (CMB or QMB) chosen to model many-body effects on the thermodynamic properties of the fluid phases of Si.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2016

A pressure consistent bridge correction of Kovalenko-Hirata closure in Ornstein-Zernike theory for Lennard-Jones fluids by apparently adjusting sigma parameter

Ornstein-Zernike (OZ) integral equation theory is known to overestimate the excess internal energy, U{sup ex}, pressure through the virial route, P{sub v}, and excess chemical potential, μ{sup ex}, for one-component Lennard-Jones (LJ) fluids under hypernetted chain (HNC) and Kovalenko-Hirata (KH) approximatons. As one of the bridge correction methods to improve the precision of these thermodynamic quantities, it was shown in our previous paper that the method to apparently adjust σ parameter in the LJ potential is effective [T. Miyata and Y. Ebato, J. Molec. Liquids. 217, 75 (2016)]. In our previous paper, we evaluated the actual variation in the σ parameter by using a fitting procedure to molecular dynamics (MD) results. In this article, we propose an alternative method to determine the actual variation in the σ parameter. The proposed method utilizes a condition that the virial and compressibility pressures coincide with each other. This method can correct OZ theory without a fitting procedure to MD results, and possesses characteristics of keeping a form of HNC and/or KH closure. We calculate the radial distribution function, pressure, excess internal energy, and excess chemical potential for one-component LJ fluids to check the performance of our proposed bridge function. We discuss the precision of these thermodynamic quantities by comparing with MD results. In addition, we also calculate a corrected gas-liquid coexistence curve based on a corrected KH-type closure and compare it with MD results.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2017

Nonlinear fluid simulation study of stimulated Raman and Brillouin scatterings in shock ignition

Here, we developed a new nonlinear fluid laser-plasma-instability code ( FLAME ) using a multi-fluid plasma model combined with full electromagnetic wave equations. The completed one-dimensional version of FLAME was used to study laser-plasma instabilities in shock ignition. The simulations results showed that absolute stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) modes growing near the quarter-critical surface were saturated by Langmuir-wave Decay Instabilities (LDI) and pump depletion. The ion-acoustic waves from LDI acted as seeds of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering, which displayed a bursting pattern and caused strong pump depletion. Re-scattering of SRS at the 1/16th-critical surface was also observed in a high temperature case. These results largely agreed with the corresponding Particle-in-Cell simulations.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2017

Statistical mechanics of transport processes in active fluids: Equations of hydrodynamics

We present the equations of hydrodynamics including mass, linear momentum, angular momentum, and energy are derived by coarse-graining the microscopic equations of motion for systems consisting of rotary dumbbells driven by internal torques. In deriving the balance of linear momentum, we find that the symmetry of the stress tensor is broken due to the presence of non-zero torques on individual particles. The broken symmetry of the stress tensor induces internal spin in the fluid and leads us to consider the balance of internal angular momentum in addition to the usual moment of momentum. In the absence of spin, the moment of momentum is the same as the total angular momentum. In deriving the form of the balance of total angular momentum, we find the microscopic expressions for the couple stress tensor that drives the spin field. We show that the couple stress contains contributions from both intermolecular interactions and the active forces. The presence of spin leads to the idea of balance of moment of inertia due to the constant exchange of particles in a small neighborhood around a macroscopic point. We derive the associated balance of moment of inertia at the macroscale and identify the moment of inertia flux that induces its transport. Lastly, we obtain the balances of total and internal energy of the active fluid and identify the sources of heat and heat fluxes in the system.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2018

Two-fluid MHD regime of resistive drift-wave instability

Drift instabilities contribute to the formation of edge turbulence and zonal flows and thus the anomalous transport in tokamaks. Experiments often found micro-scale turbulence strongly coupled with large-scale magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) processes, whereas a general framework has been lacking that can cover both regimes, in particular, their coupling. Here, the linear resistive drift wave instability is investigated using a full 2-fluid MHD model, as well as its numerical implementation in the NIMROD code. Both analytical and numerical analyses reveal a macro-scale global drift wave eigenmode coupled with MHD dynamics and illustrate a non-monotonic dispersion relation with respect to both perpendicular and parallel wavenumbers. NIMROD findings also reveal an edge-localized behavior in the radial mode structure as the azimuthal mode number increases, implying the dependence of the 2-fluid effects due to the inhomogeneous density profile. The edge-localization introduces a non-trivial dependence of the effective perpendicular wavenumber to the perpendicular mode number, which may explain the quantitative difference between the global dispersion relation and its local approximation from the conventional local theory.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

A deep learning enabler for nonintrusive reduced order modeling of fluid flows

Here in this paper, we introduce a modular deep neural network (DNN) framework for data-driven reduced order modeling of dynamical systems relevant to fluid flows. We propose various DNN architectures which numerically predict evolution of dynamical systems by learning from either using discrete state or slope information of the system. Our approach has been demonstrated using both residual formula and backward difference scheme formulas. However, it can be easily generalized into many different numerical schemes as well. We give a demonstration of our framework for three examples: (i) Kraichnan-Orszag system, an illustrative coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equation, (ii) Lorenz system exhibiting chaotic behavior, and (iii) a nonintrusive model order reduction framework for the two-dimensional Boussinesq equations with a differentially heated cavity flow setup at various Rayleigh numbers. Using only snapshots of state variables at discrete time instances, our data-driven approach can be considered truly nonintrusive since any prior information about the underlying governing equations is not required for generating the reduced order model. Our a posteriori analysis shows that the proposed data-driven approach is remarkably accurate and can be used as a robust predictive tool for nonintrusive model order reduction of complex fluid flows.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Machine learning surrogate models for Landau fluid closure

The first result of applying the machine/deep learning technique to the fluid closure problem is presented in this letter. As a start, three different types of neural networks (multilayer perceptron (MLP), convolutional neural network (CNN) and two-layer discrete Fourier transform (DFT) network) were constructed and trained to learn the well-known Hammett-Perkins Landau fluid closure in configuration space. We found that in order to train a well-preformed network, a minimum size of training data set is needed; MLP also requires a minimum number of neurons in the hidden layers equals to the degrees of freedom in Fourier space despite training data is fed in configuration space. Out of three models DFT performs the best for the clean data most likely due to the existence of nice Fourier expression for Hammett-Perkins closure but it is least robust with respect to input noise. Overall, with appropriate tuning and optimization, all three neural networks are able to accurately predict Hammett-Perkins closure and reproduce the inherit nonlocal feature, suggesting a promising path to calculate more sophisticated closures with the machine/deep learning technique.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Neural network representability of fully ionized plasma fluid model closures

The closure problem in fluid modeling is a well-known challenge to modelers aiming to accurately describe their systems of interest. Over many years, analytic formulations in a wide range of regimes have been presented but a practical, generalized fluid closure for magnetized plasmas remains an elusive goal. Here, as a first step toward constructing a novel data-based approach to this problem, we apply ever-maturing machine learning methods to assess the capability of neural network architectures to reproduce crucial physics inherent in known magnetized plasma closures. We find encouraging results, indicating the applicability of neural networks to closure physics, but also arrive at recommendations on how one should choose appropriate network architectures for the given locality properties dictated by the underlying physics of the plasma.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Two-dimensional turbulence in a massless fluid with a relativistic lattice Boltzmann model

We investigate a relativistic adaptation of the lattice Boltzmann method that reproduces the equations of motion for a turbulent, two-dimensional, massless hydrodynamic system. The classical lattice Boltzmann method and its extension to relativistic fluid dynamics are described. The numeric formulation is evaluated using a zero-averaged stirring force introduced into the numerics to induce turbulence, and the flow characteristics produced are compared to properties of a classical turbulent hydrodynamic flow. The model can reasonably be expected to offer quantitative simulations of electron fluid flows in graphene or Kagome lattices.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗