Conjugate Natural Convection in a Porous Enclosure with Non-Uniform Heat Generation

Effects of a conductive wall on natural convection in a square porous enclosure having internal heating at a rate proportional to a power of temperature difference is studied numerically in this article. The horizontal heating is considered, where the vertical walls heated isothermally at different temperatures while the horizontal walls are kept adiabatic. The Darcy model is used in the mathematical formulation for the porous layer and finite difference method is applied to solve the dimensionless governing equations. The governing parameters considered are the Rayleigh number (0 ???Ra ???1000), the internal heating and the local exponent parameters (0 ????? ???5), (1 ????? ???3), the wall to porous thermal conductivity ratio (0.44 ???Kr ???9.9) and the ratio of wall thickness to its width (0.02 ???D ???0.5). The results are presented to show the effect of these parameters on the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics. It is found a strong internal heating can generate significant maximum fluid temperature more than the conductive solid wall. Increasing value thermal conductivity ratio and/or decreasing the thickness of solid wall can increase the maximum fluid temperature. It is also found that at very low Rayleigh number, the heat transfer across the porous enclosure remain stable for any values of the thermal conductivity ratio.     

Construction of Third-Order Diagonal Implicit Runge-Kutta Methods for Stiff Problems

We presents a new third-order diagonally implicit Runge~Kutta integration formula for stiff initial value problems, designed to be A-stable methods. The stability of the methods is analyzed and numerical results are shown to verify the conclusions.     

On a finite strain viscoplastic theory based on a new internal dissipation inequality

This work is focused on the theoretical development and numerical implementation of a viscoplastic law. According to the second law of thermodynamics a dissipation inequality described in the rotated material coordinate system is developed. Based on this dissipation inequality and the principle of maximum dissipation a finite strain viscoplastic model described also in the rotated material coordinate system is formulated. The evolution equations are expressed in terms of the material time derivatives of the rotated elastic logarithmic strain, the accumulated plastic strain and the strain-like tensor conjugate to the rotated back stress. The mathematical structure of this theory is concise and similar to that of the infinitesimal viscoplastic theory. These characteristics make the numerical implementation of this theory easy. The stress integration algorithm and the algorithmic tangent moduli for the infinitesimal theory can be applied to the numerical implementation of the present finite strain theory with a little reformulation. The complicated algorithmic formulations for most of other finite plastic laws can be therefore circumvented. In order to check the effectivity of the present finite strain theory a set of numerical examples under strict deformation conditions are presented. These numerical examples prove the excellent performance of the present viscoplastic material law at describing the finite strain elastoplastic and viscoplastic problems.     

Pulsating turbulent pipe flow in the current dominated regime at high and very-high frequencies

The paper presents Direct Numerical Simulations of sinusoidal pulsating turbulent flow, at low bulk Reynolds numbers, with high frequency, in a straight pipe. Our objective is to study pulsating flow considering it as the superposition of a temporal unsteadiness on a mean current, and from this viewpoint, to decompose the flow in a mean and an oscillating part. Firstly, we examine the time-averaged statistics, which show that the parent flow retains its properties. Then, we analyze the oscillating part of the flow, and confirm the notion that for rapidly pulsating flow, the amplitude of the streamwise velocity and the phase lag at different radial locations follow the solution of the laminar Stokes problem. In addition, we find that the modulation of the turbulent fluctuations follows approximately the sinusoidal form of the imposed pulsation, and that the ratio of the frequency parameter to the amplitude of the streamwise velocity can be used as a scaling factor. We investigate the effects of the amplitude and the frequency of the imposed unsteadiness on the modulation of the time-averaged properties and the turbulence statistics, through a systematic analysis. Finally, we examine the time evolution of the mean velocity and the turbulent fluctuations. These results indicate that a lower limit for the high frequency regime can be identified, based on the level of conformity of the phase-averaged profiles on their steady-state counterparts. For very high frequencies, we find that that the flow behavior does not change, indicating the absence of an upper limit for the high frequency regime.     

Experimental study on the direct contact condensation of the steam jet in subcooled water flow in a rectangular channel: Flow patterns and flow field

Direct contact condensation (DCC) of steam jet in subcooled water flow in a channel was experimentally studied. The main inlet parameters, including steam mass flux, water mass flux and water temperature were tested in the ranges of 200–600 kg/(m² s), 7–18 × 10³ kg/(m² s), 288–333 K, respectively. Two unstable flow patterns and two stable flow patterns were observed via visualization window by a high speed camera. The flow patterns were determined by steam mass flux, water mass flux and water temperature, and the relationship between flow patterns and flow field parameters was discussed. The results indicated that whether pressure or temperature distributions on the bottom wall of channel could represent different flow patterns. And the position of pressure peak on the bottom wall could almost represent the condensation length. The upper wall pressure distributions were mainly dependent on steam and water mass flux; and the upper wall temperature distributions were affected by the three main inlet parameters. Moreover, the bottom wall pressure and temperature distributions of different unstable flow patterns had similar characteristics while those of stable flow patterns were affected by shock and expansion waves. The underlying cause of transition between different flow patterns under different inlet parameters was reflected and discussed based on pressure distributions.     

Optimization of electro-optical characteristics of GaAs-based oxide confinement VCSEL

An experimental study has been presented of the oxide-confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL) operating in the 850 nm region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this regard, various relevant VCSEL samples with numerous oxide aperture sizes have been fabricated and characterized. Thorough investigations of the electrical as well as optical characteristics of the fabricated samples have been performed which includes the overall device performance as a function of the oxidize aperture sizes. It is reported that the VCSEL with oxide aperture size <10 μm require low threshold currents (<1 mA). Further, the differential quantum efficiencies up to 28% were measured for a number of these devices. It is found that devices employing oxide aperture of 10 to 15 μm shows promising electro-optical characteristics for 850 nm oxide VCSEL optimization.     

Flows of a generalized second grade fluid in a cylinder due to a velocity shock

Unsteady axial flows of second grade fluids with generalized fractional constitutive equation in a circular cylinder are studied. Flows are generated by a time-dependent pressure gradient in the axial direction, an external magnetic field perpendicular on the flow direction and by the cylinder motion. Two different problems are analyzed; one in which the cylinder velocity supports a shock at the instant t = 0 and another in which the cylinder motion is a translation with time-dependent velocity along the axis of cylinder. The generalized fractional constitutive equation of second grade fluid is described by the Caputo time-fractional derivative. Analytical solutions for the velocity field are obtained by using the Laplace transform with respect to time variable and the finite Hankel transform of order zero with respect to the radial coordinate. The influence of the fractional parameter of Caputo derivative on the fluid velocity has been studied by numerical simulations and graphical illustrations. It is found that the fractional fluid flows are faster than the ordinary second grade fluid.     

MHD flow and heat transfer over a radially stretching/shrinking disk

A steady magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow past a radially stretching or shrinking disk is investigated. The governing partial differential equations are transformed into a set of ordinary (similarity) differential equations by a similarity transformation. These equations along with the corresponding boundary conditions are solved numerically using the boundary value problem solver (bvp4c) in Matlab. The effects of magnetic field and suction on the shear stress and the heat transfer are analyzed and discussed. It is found that both parameters affect more in the shrinking region. The increase in the magnetic parameter results in the increase of the skin friction coefficient but decrease in the local Nusselt number.The skin friction coefficient and the local Nusselt number increase as suction increases.     

Synergy study on charge transport dynamics in hybrid organic solar cell: Photocurrent mapping and performance analysis under local spectrum

Charge transport dynamics in ZnO based inverted organic solar cell (IOSC) has been characterized with transient photocurrent spectroscopy and localised photocurrent mapping-atomic force microscopy. The value of maximum exciton generation rate was found to vary from 2.6 × 10²⁷ m⁻³s⁻¹ (J_sat = 79.7 A m⁻²) to 2.9 × 10²⁷ m⁻³s⁻¹ (J_sat = 90.8 A m⁻²) for devices with power conversion efficiency ranging from 2.03 to 2.51%. These results suggest that nanorods served as an excellent electron transporting layer that provides efficient charge transport and enhances IOSC device performance. The photovoltaic performance of OSCs with various growth times of ZnO nanorods have been analysed for a comparison between AM1.5G spectrum and local solar spectrum. The simulated PCE of all devices operating under local spectrum exhibited extensive improvement with the gain of 13.3–13.7% in which the ZnO nanorods grown at 15 min possess the highest PCE under local solar with the value of 2.82%.     

Non-uniform heat generation effect on heat transfer of a non-Newtonian power-law fluid over a non-linearly stretching sheet

The effects of non-uniform heat generation/absorption and viscous dissipation on heat transfer of a non-Newtonian power-law fluid on a non-linearly stretching surface have been examined. The governing nonlinear partial differential equations describing the problem are transformed to a system of non-linear ordinary differential equations by using suitable similarity transformation. The transformed system of ordinary differential equations is solved numerically using fourth order Runge-Kutta method with the shooting technique. Graphical solutions for the dimensionless temperature are presented and discussed for various values of the power-law index parameter, the Prandtl number, the heat generation/absorption parameter and the Eckert number. The results show that the local Nusselt number is reduced with increasing the Eckert number or the heat generation parameter, whereas the heat absorption parameter has the effect of enhancing the local Nusselt number.