Internal Flow Conditions Research Articles

Internal Flow of Contra-Rotating Small Hydroturbine at Off- Design Flow Rates

Small hydropower generation is one of important alternative energy, and enormous potential lie in the small hydropower. However, efficiency of small hydroturbines is lower than that of large one. Then, there are demands for small hydroturbines to keep high performance in wide flow rate range. Therefore, we adopted contra-rotating rotors, which can be expected to achieve high performance. In this research, performance of the contra-rotating small hydroturbine with 60mm casing diameter was investigated by an experiment and numerical analysis. Efficiency of the contra-rotating small hydroturbine was high in pico-hydroturbine and high efficiency could be kept in wide flow rate range, however the performance of a rear rotor decreased significantly in partial flow rates. Then, internal flow condition, which was difficult to measure experimentally, was investigated by the numerical flow analysis. Then, a relation between the performance and internal flow condition was considered by the numerical analysis result.

Internal flow measurements in pilot scale wet low-intensity magnetic separation

In the mining industry, ferromagnetic particles (e.g. magnetite) are concentrated using wet low-intensity magnetic separation (LIMS). The performance is to a large extent controlled by the internal flow conditions in the separator. In previous work, it was shown how an ultrasound pulse-echo setup can be used to simultaneously measure particle velocity profiles and local solids concentration variations in laboratory conditions.In this paper, a real-world case is demonstrated where the system is installed on one of the wet LIMS at the LKAB R&D facilities in Malmberget, Sweden. For the pilot scale experiments a setup with two ultrasound transducers, mounted at the bottom of the separator tank, is used. The design of experiments method is used to study the effects of the feed solids concentration, drum rotational speed, position of the concentrate weir, and the magnet assembly angle on the measured flow patterns. The results show that it is possible to detect changes in the flow velocity patterns and the local solids concentration, as the operational conditions of the separator are varied.Of the factors studied, the drum rotational speed has the strongest influence on the overall flow velocity in the dewatering zone. Also, the presence of a recirculating flow transporting gangue particles away from the concentrate is confirmed. The factor with the strongest influence on this recirculating flow is also the drum rotational speed, together with the magnet assembly angle. Using this method it is possible to make high quality measurements of internal flow velocity profiles. It is also possible to monitor material build-up on the separator drum, and e.g. detect overload of magnetic material. The insights gained, and the methods developed, have generated new possibilities to control, optimise, and develop the wet LIMS process.

Experimental characterization and simulation of a fin-tube latent heat storage using high density polyethylene as PCM

Polymers have rarely been used as storage materials in latent heat storages up to now. Thus, we systematically screened all polymers available on a large-scale, selected promising ones based on their theoretical properties and experimentally tested more than 50 candidates. We found that polyethylene, polyoxymethylene and polyamides are promising even as recycled material. Especially high density polyethylene (HDPE) turned out to be suitable as was shown by detailed thermophysical characterization including more than 1000 heating and cooling cycles for INEOS Rigidex HD6070EA. We built a storage with 170kg HDPE and a total mass of 600kg based on a fin-tube heat exchanger and characterized its energy capacity, power characteristics and temperature profiles using a thermal oil test rig. A 3-dimensional model was implemented in ANSYS Fluent achieving excellent agreement between experiment and simulation. By analyzing the internal heat transfer contributions, temperature distributions and flow conditions, we were able to propose an optimized design and operation for future polymer latent heat storages.

Hydrodynamic mechanism analysis of the pump hump district for a pump-turbine

Purpose Numerically analyzed the flow characteristic and explored the hydrodynamic mechanism of the pump mode hump district formation of a Francis pump-turbine. Design/methodology/approach Numerical simulations were conducted of the entire pump-turbine flow passage under different discharge conditions by adopting the SST-CC turbulence model. The internal flow at hump district has been explained in detail combined with the model test in this paper. The unsteady flow and pressure fluctuation characteristics are analysed under five different discharge conditions in the hump and nearby region. The reason of the hump district formation is explored combined with the flow components hydraulic loss. Findings The large hydraulic loss, high relative peak-to-peak amplitudes and low dominant frequencies are on account of the disorganized internal flow condition. The formation of the hump district is concerned with the large hydraulic loss inside the draft tube, runner and guide vanes as there occurs secondary flow, backflow even vortex in the hump district. In addition, the low dominant frequencies at recording points inside the flow passage are always accompanied with the change of flow patterns and the spreading of the pressure fluctuations. Originality/value The analysis method of each flow components hydraulic loss combined with internal flow structure is adopted to explore the mechanism of pump mode hump characteristic. The flow characteristic and pressure pulse characteristics all correspond to the flow components hydraulic loss.

CONJUGATED HEAT TRANSFER ANALYSIS OF A FILM COOLING PASSAGE WITH TURBULATOR RIBS

In this study, the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness and conjugate heat transfer characteristics for a circular hole are investigated numerically. Seven turbulator ribs are located on the internal wall, and a film cooling hole between two adjacent ribs has an inclination angle of 30°. The secondary flow rate is affected by the internal channel flow velocity, and the external film cooling is combined with the internal channel flow conditions. In the conjugate heat transfer research, two different plate materials are considered to analyze the heat conduction characteristics. The results show that the turbulator ribs enhance the downstream heat transfer and provide a more extensive coverage area and effective cooling protection. More blade-wall heat is transferred by heat conduction, which makes the area-average wall temperature for the high thermal conductivity case to decrease along the secondary flow direction. The wall temperature distribution and film cooling effectiveness are affected significantly by heat conduction. (Less)

インライン式小型ハイドロタービンの設計に関する研究

Small hydropower generation is one of important alternative energy, and potential of small hydropower is great. Efficiency of small Hydroturbines is lower than that of large one, and these small hydro turbine's common problems are out of operation by foreign materials. Then, there are demands for small hydro turbines to keep high performance and wide flow passage. Therefore, we adopted contra-rotating rotors in order to accomplish high performance and stable operation. In design of contra-rotating rotors, it is necessary to consider the flow between front and rear rotors. In the present paper, the efficiency curves of each front and rear rotor of the test Hydroturbine is clarified and design guideline of in-line small Hydroturbine is discussed based on the efficiency curves and internal flow condition obtained by CFD.

J0530203 インライン式小型ハイドロタービンの安定運転に向けた研究開発

Small hydropower generation is one of important alternative energy, and potential of small hydropower is great. Efficiency of small hydro turbines is lower than that of large one, and these small hydro turbine's common problems are out of operation by foreign materials. Then, there are demands for small hydro turbines to keep high performance and wide flow passage. Therefore, we adopted contra-rotating rotors which can be expected to achieve high performance and low-solidity rotors with wide flow passage in order to accomplish high performance and stable operation. Experimental apparatus of the contra-rotating small hydro turbine with 60mm casing diameter was manufactured and performance of it was investigated by an experiment. Efficiency of the contra-rotating small hydro turbine was high in pico-hydro turbine and high efficiency could be kept in wide flow rate range. In the present paper, performance of contra-rotating small hydroturbine with foreign vegetables materials, was investigated by an experiment. And, internal flow condition with foreign vegetable materials, and grasses, were investigated using a high speed camera and the causes of troubles related to the foreign materials were considered.

Natural frequency analysis of a marine riser considering multiphase internal flow behavior

Marine risers are subjected to several types of excitation loads, such as motions induced by the floating production system, external hydrodynamics forces due to currents and waves and internal forces due to the internal fluid flow regularly composed by water, oil and gas. When internal flow conditions as pressure, temperature and flow rate fluctuations appear in a riser, they can induce vibration motion to the system.This paper shows a numerical algorithm to evaluate the vibrations of vertical rigid production risers under internal multiphase flow behavior. The numerical algorithm developed computes the natural frequencies of vertical risers model coupled with a hydrodynamic numerical model. The internal flow was composed of water, oil and gas and was treated as a pseudo-single phase (mixture). The numerical algorithm was developed using difference finite method. The results were compared with information available in the literature.

Experimental and numerical investigation of HyperVapotron heat transfer

The divertor first wall and neutral beam injection (NBI) components of tokamak devices require high heat flux removal up to 20–30 MW m−2 for future fusion reactors. The water cooled HyperVapotron (HV) structure, which relies on internal grooves or fins and boiling heat transfer to maximize the heat transfer capability, is the most promising candidate. The HV devices, that are able to transfer large amounts of heat (1–20 MW m−2) efficiently, have therefore been developed specifically for this application. Until recently, there have been few attempts to observe the detailed bubble characteristics and vortex evolvement of coolant flowing inside their various parts and understand of the internal two-phase complex heat transfer mechanism behind the vapotron effect. This research builds the experimental facilities of HyperVapotron Loop-I (HVL-I) and Pressure Water HyperVapotron Loop-II (PWHL-II) to implement the subcooled boiling principle experiment in terms of typical flow parameters, geometrical parameters of test section and surface heat flux, which are similar to those of the ITER-like first wall and NBI components (EAST and MAST). The multiphase flow and heat transfer phenomena on the surface of grooves and triangular fins when the subcooled water flowed through were observed and measured with the planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF) and high-speed photography (HSP) techniques. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) was selected to reveal vortex formation, the flow structure that promotes the vapotron effect during subcooled boiling. The coolant flow data for contributing to the understanding of the vapotron phenomenon and the assessment of how the design and operational conditions that might affect the thermal performance of the devices were collected and analysed. The subcooled flow boiling model and methods of HV heat transfer adopted in the considered computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code were evaluated by comparing the calculated wall temperatures with the experimentally measured values. It was discovered that the bubble and vortex characteristics in the HV are clearly heavily dependent on the internal geometry, flow conditions and input heat flux. The evaporation latent heat is the primary heat transfer mechanism of HV flow under the condition of high heat flux, and the heat transfer through convection is very limited. The percentage of wall heat flux going into vapour production is almost 70%. These relationships between the flow phenomena and thermal performance of the HV device are essential to study the mechanisms for the flow structure alterations for design optimization and improvements of the ITER-like devices' water cooling structure and plasma facing components for future fusion reactors.

Heat Transfer Enhancement in Turbine Blade Internal Cooling Ducts

Gas turbine is a type of rotary engine that consists of compressor, combustion chamber, and turbine sections. This type of engine works in the Brayton Cycle principle that is compression of atmospheric flow, combustion of air-fuel mixture and expanding high temperature combustion flow to generate power output from turbine. The aim of this study is to determine the duct geometry and flow conditions of the gas turbine blades having the internal cooling ducts that acquire highest heat transfer on turbine blades. For different design of internal duct geometries and flow conditions, Fluent solver is used and solutions are validated with Han’s experimental results.

Effect of the collector tube profile on Pitot pump performances

The pitot pump is composed of the rotating casing with the impeller channel and the pitot tube type collector as the discharge line. The radial impeller feeds water to the rotating casing. The water rotating together with the casing is caught by the stationary pitot tube type collector, and then discharges to the outside. This type pump, as the extra high head pump, is provided mainly for boiler feed systems, and has been designed by trial and error. To optimize the pump profiles, it is desirable to investigate not only performances but also internal flow conditions. This paper discusses experimentally and numerically the relation between the pump performances and the flow conditions in the rotating casing. The moderately larger dimensions of the collector make the pump head and the discharge high with the higher hydraulic efficiency. The flow in the casing is almost the forced vortex type whose velocity is in proportion to the radius but the core velocity is affected with the drag force of the stationary collector. Based upon the above results, the profile of the pitot tube type collector was optimized with the numerical simulation.

Performance analysis of mini centrifugal pump with splitter blades

Design method for a mini centrifugal pump is not established because the internal flow condition for these small-sized fluid machines is not clarified and conventional theory is not suitable for small-sized pumps. Then, a semi-open impeller for the mini centrifugal pump with 55mm impeller diameter is adopted in this research to take simplicity and maintenance into consideration. Splitter blades are adopted in this research to improve the performance and internal flow condition of mini centrifugal pump having large blade outlet angle. The performance tests are conducted with these rotors in order to investigate the effect of the splitter blades on the performance and internal flow condition of the mini centrifugal pump. A three dimensional steady numerical flow analysis is conducted to analyze rotor, volute efficiency and loss caused by a vortex. It is clarified from the experimental results that the performance of the mini centrifugal pump is improved by the effect of the splitter blades. Flow condition at outlet of the rotor becomes uniform and back flow regions are suppressed in the case with the splitter blades. Further, the volute efficiency increases and the vortex loss decreases. In the present paper, the performance of the mini centrifugal pump is shown and the flow condition is clarified with the results of the experiment and the numerical flow analysis. Furthermore, the performance analyses of the mini centrifugal pumps with and without the splitter blades are conducted.

Unstructured large eddy simulations of heated supersonic twin jets

Unstructured large eddy simulations are performed with the compressible flow solver ”Charles” developed at Cascade Technologies, for heated supersonic over-expanded jets issued from a twin nozzle. The study focuses on the modeling of the internal flow and its effects on the flow-field in the jet plume and ultimately on the radiated noise. In this work, near-wall adaptive mesh refinement, synthetic inflow turbulence and wall modeling are used inside the nozzle. In addition to the converging-diverging nozzle geometry, the computational domain includes the Y-duct, S-ducts, and angle adapter upstream of the nozzles, to realistically reproduce the elements of the experimental configuration where the internal flow conditions and wall modeling can be expected to affect the external flow-field and sound-field predictions. Comparisons between the numerical predictions and experimental PIV and far-field noise measurements from NASA Glenn Research Center will be presented and discussed.

Allowable flux density on a solar central receiver

The allowable flux density on a solar central receiver is a significant receiver parameter and is related to the receiver life span and economics. The allowable flux density has gradually increased as receiver technologies have developed and is related to various factors, such as the material characteristics, tube sizes, and internal tube flow conditions. A mathematical model was developed to calculate the allowable flux density for the Solar Two receiver which agrees well with published data. The model was then used to show that a higher allowable flux density can be obtained by increasing the allowable strain of the tube material and the fluid velocity and decreasing the tube thermal resistance, the convective thermal resistance, and the tube diameter and wall thickness. A sensitive analysis shows that the most important influence is the wall thickness, followed by the tube diameter and fluid velocity. Finally, a molten salt receiver gives a much higher allowable flux density than water/steam receivers and is even better than a supercritical steam receiver.

Transonic moist air flows with release of latent heat by non-equilibrium condensation

This study proposes a numerical method for solving transonic moist air flows with non-equilibrium condensation by taking FLUENT as the secondary development platform. The governing equations consist of moist air motion equations with an additional source term in the energy equation, which considers the effects of heat addition, and a set of four ordinary differential equations that are related to the generation of condensate mass. The moist air motion equations are solved using the standard features of the code in FLUENT, whereas the four ordinary differential equations are modelled using the user-defined-scalar transport modelling provided by FLUENT. This numerical method is validated both under internal and external flow conditions in a turbine cascade and over the NACA 0012 airfoil. Further investigations include testing the moist air flows in a compressor cascade channel and over the asymmetric RAE 2822 airfoil. The results show that the non-equilibrium condensation of moist air under transonic flow condition has a significant influence on the flow field structure and the aerodynamic performance of the turbine and compressor cascade.

Performance and Internal Flow Condition of Mini Centrifugal Pump with Splitter Blades

Mini centrifugal pumps having a diameter smaller than 100mm are employed in many fields. But the design method for the mini centrifugal pump is not established because the internal flow condition for these small-sized fluid machines is not clarified and conventional theory is not suitable for small-sized pumps. Therefore, mini centrifugal pumps with simple structure were investigated by this research. Splitter blades were adopted in this research to improve the performance and the internal flow condition of mini centrifugal pump which had large blade outlet angle. The original impeller without the splitter blades and the impeller with the splitter blades were prepared for an experiment. The performance tests are conducted with these rotors in order to investigate the effect of the splitter blades on performance and internal flow condition of mini centrifugal pump. On the other hand, a three dimensional steady numerical flow analysis is conducted with the commercial code (ANSYS-CFX) to investigate the internal flow condition in detail. It is clarified from experimental results that the performance of the mini centrifugal pump is improved by the effect of the splitter blades. Blade-to-blade low velocity regions are suppressed in the case with the splitter blades and total pressure loss regions are decreased. The effects of the splitter blades on the performance and the internal flow condition are discussed in this paper.

Internal Flow Condition of High Power Contra-Rotating Small-Sized Axial Fan

Data centers have been built with spread of cloud computing. Further, electric power consumption of it is growing rapidly. High power cooling small-sized fans; high pressure and large flow rate small-sized fan, are used for servers in the data centers and there is a strong demand to increase power of it because of increase of quantity of heat from the servers. Contra-rotating rotors have been adopted for some of high power cooling fans to meet the demand for high power. There is a limitation of space for servers and geometrical restriction for cooling fans because spokes to support fan motors, electrical power cables and so on should be installed in the cooling fans. It is important to clarify complicated internal flow condition and influence of a geometric shape of the cooling fans on performance to achieve high performance of the cooling fans. In the present paper, the performance and the flow condition of the high power contra-rotating small-sized axial fan with a 40mm square casing are shown by experimental and numerical results. Furthermore, influence of the geometrical shape of the small-sized cooling fan on the internal flow condition is clarified and design guideline to improve the performance is discussed.

Unsteady internal flow conditions of mini-centrifugal pump with splitter blades

Mini centrifugal pumps having a diameter smaller than 100mm are employed in many fields. But the design method for the mini centrifugal pump is not established because the internal flow condition for these small-sized fluid machines is not clarified and conventional theory is not suitable for small-sized pumps. Therefore, mini centrifugal pumps with simple structure were investigated by this research. Splitter blades were adopted in this research to improve the performance and the internal flow condition of mini centrifugal pump which had large blade outlet angle. The original impeller without the splitter blades and the impeller with the splitter blades were prepared for experiment. The performance tests are conducted with these rotors in order to investigate the effect of the splitter blades on performance and internal flow condition of mini centrifugal pump. On the other hand, a three dimensional unsteady numerical flow analysis was conducted to investigate the change of the internal flow according to the rotor rotation. It is clarified from the experimental results that the performance of the mini centrifugal pump is improved by the splitter blades. The blade-to-blade low velocity region was suppressed in the case with the splitter blades. In addition to that, the unsteady flows near the volute casing tongue were suppressed due to the splitter blades. In the present paper, the performance of the mini centrifugal pump is shown and the unsteady flow condition is clarified with the results of the numerical flow analysis. Furthermore, the effects of the splitter blades on the performance and the unsteady internal flow condition are investigated.

J055011 二重反転形小型ハイドロタービンの性能および内部流れに関する研究(〔J055-01〕流体機械の研究開発におけるEFD/CFD(1))

Small hydropower generation is one of important alternative energy, and potential of small hydropower is great. Efficiency of small hydro turbines is lower than that of large one, and these small hydro turbine's common problems are out of operation by foreign materials. Then, there are demands for small hydro turbines to keep high performance and wide flow passage. Therefore, we adopted contra-rotating rotors which can be expected to achieve high performance and low-solidity rotors with wide flow passage in order to accomplish high performance and stable operation. Final goal of this study is development of an electric appliance type small hydro turbine which has high portability and makes an effective use of unused small hydro power energy source. In this research, experimental apparatus of the contra-rotating small hydro turbine with 60mm casing diameter was manufactured and performance of it was investigated by an experiment. Efficiency of the contra-rotating small hydro turbine was high in pico-hydro turbine and high efficiency could be kept in wide flow rate range. Internal flow condition, which was difficult to measure experimentally, was shown by the numerical flow analysis. Further, influence of spokes to support the rotor was clarified. Then, a relation between the performance and internal flow condition was considered by the experimental and numerical analysis results.

J055022 二重反転形小型軸流ファンの前後段翼列間距離が性能特性と内部流れに及ぼす影響(〔J055-02〕流体機械の研究開発におけるEFD/CFD(2))

Small-sized axial fan is used as air cooler for electric equipments. But there is strong demand for higher power of fan according to the increase of quantity of heat from electric devices. Therefore, higher rotational speed design is necessary, however it causes the deterioration of efficiency and increases the noise. Contra-rotating axial fan is smaller than conventional axial fan under the same rotational speed, and is effective for lower rotational speed design under the same diameter. Then, contra-rotating rotors were proposed for the improvement of the performance of small-sized axial fans and the advantages of it on the point of view of the performance were confirmed. In the present paper, the performance curves and internal flow of the contra-rotating small-sized axial fan with 100mm diameter obtained by the experimental and numerical analysis results are shown and the pressure distribution and attack angle of rear rotor at the design flow rate are clarified. Furthermore, the influence of the blade row distance on the performance and internal flow condition is clarified and higher performance design of the contra-rotating small-sized axial fan are discussed.