Experimental investigation of forced convective heat transfer coefficient in nanofluids of Al2O3/EG and CuO/EG in a double pipe and plate heat exchangers under turbulent flow

Nanofluid is the term applied to a suspension of solid, nanometer-sized particles in conventional fluids; the most prominent features of such fluids include enhanced heat characteristics, such as convective heat transfer coefficient, in comparison to the base fluid without considerable alterations in physical and chemical properties. In this study, nanofluids of aluminum oxide and copper oxide were prepared in ethylene glycol separately. The effect of forced convective heat transfer coefficient in turbulent flow was calculated using a double pipe and plate heat exchangers. Furthermore, we calculated the forced convective heat transfer coefficient of the nanofluids using theoretical correlations in order to compare the results with the experimental data. We also evaluated the effects of particle concentration and operating temperature on the forced convective heat transfer coefficient of the nanofluids. The findings indicate considerable enhancement in convective heat transfer coefficient of the nanofluids as compared to the base fluid, ranging from 2% to 50%. Moreover, the results indicate that with increasing nanoparticles concentration and nanofluid temperature, the convective heat transfer coefficient of nanofluid increases. Our experiments revealed that in lower temperatures, the theoretical and experimental findings coincide; however, in higher temperatures and with increased concentrations of the nanoparticles in ethylene glycol, the two set of results tend to have growing discrepancies.     

Influence of growth phase on the essential oil composition and antimicrobial activities of Satureja hortensis

The variations in quantity and quality of essential oils (EOs) from the aerial parts of cultivated Satureja hortensis were determined at different stages of harvesting. The EOs of air-dried samples were obtained by hydrodistillation and analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The antimicrobial activity of the EOs was investigated by broth microdilution methods. The amount of EOs (w/w, %) were 2.3, 2.5, 2.0, and 1.8% at floral budding, full flowering, immature fruit, and ripened fruit stages, respectively. gamma-Terpinene was the major compound of the EO at all developmental stages, except the ripened fruit stage when it was replaced by carvacrol (46.4%). The EOs exhibited strong antibacterial activities against the tested bacteria. Moreover, the EOs either inhibited or killed the examined yeasts at concentrations ranging from 0.03-8.0 microL/mL. Considering the wide range of antimicrobial activities of the examined EOs, they might have potential to be used in the management of infective agents.     

Genuinely multidimensional characteristic‐based scheme for incompressible flows

This paper presents a novel multidimensional characteristic‐based (MCB) upwind method for the solution of incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. As opposed to the conventional characteristic‐based (CB) schemes, it is genuinely multidimensional in that the local characteristic paths, along which information is propagated, are used. For the first time, the multidimensional characteristic structure of incompressible flows modified by artificial compressibility is extracted and used to construct an inherent multidimensional upwind scheme. The new proposed MCB scheme in conjunction with the finite‐volume discretization is employed to model the convective fluxes. Using this formulation, the steady two‐dimensional incompressible flow in a lid‐driven cavity is solved for a wide range of Reynolds numbers. It was found that the new proposed scheme presents more accurate results than the conventional CB scheme in both their first‐ and second‐order counterparts in the case of cavity flow. Also, results obtained with second‐order MCB scheme in some cases are more accurate than the central scheme that in turn provides exact second‐order discretization in this grid. With this inherent upwinding technique for evaluating convective fluxes at cell interfaces, no artificial viscosity is required even at high Reynolds numbers. Another remarkable advantage of MCB scheme lies in its faster convergence rate with respect to the CB scheme that is found to exhibit substantial delays in convergence reported in the literature. The results obtained using new proposed scheme are in good agreement with the standard benchmark solutions in the literature. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fast Kalman Filtering and Forward–Backward Smoothing via a Low-Rank Perturbative Approach

Kalman filtering-smoothing is a fundamental tool in statistical time-series analysis. However, standard implementations of the Kalman filter-smoother require O(d³) time and O(d²) space per time step, where d is the dimension of the state variable, and are therefore impractical in high-dimensional problems. In this article we note that if a relatively small number of observations are available per time step, the Kalman equations may be approximated in terms of a low-rank perturbation of the prior state covariance matrix in the absence of any observations. In many cases this approximation may be computed and updated very efficiently (often in just O(k²d) or O(k²d + kdlog?d) time and space per time step, where k is the rank of the perturbation and in general k ? d), using fast methods from numerical linear algebra. We justify our approach and give bounds on the rank of the perturbation as a function of the desired accuracy. For the case of smoothing, we also quantify the error of our algorithm because of the low-rank approximation and show that it can be made arbitrarily low at the expense of a moderate computational cost. We describe applications involving smoothing of spatiotemporal neuroscience data. This article has online supplementary material.     

Characteristic‐based inlet and outlet boundary conditions for incompressible flows

Determining boundary conditions (BCs) for incompressible flows is such a delicate matter that affects the accuracy of the results. In this research, a new characteristic‐based BC for incompressible Navier‐Stokes equations is introduced. Discretization of equations has been done via finite volume. Additionally, artificial compressibility correction has been employed to deal with equations. Ordinary extrapolation from inner cells of a domain was used as a traditional way to estimate pressure and velocities on solid wall and inlet/outlet boundaries. Here, this method was substituted by the newly proposed BCs based on the characteristics of artificial compressibility equations. To follow this purpose, a computer code has been developed to carry out series of numerical tests for a flow over a backward‐facing step and was applied to a wide range of Reynolds numbers and grid combinations. Calculation of convective and viscous fluxes was done using Jameson's averaging scheme. Employing the characteristic‐based method for determining BCs has shown an improved convergence rate and reduced calculation time comparing with those of traditional ones. Furthermore, with the reduction of domain and computational cells, a similar accuracy was achieved for the results in comparison with the ones obtained from the traditional extrapolation method, and these results were in good agreement with the ones in the literature.     

High‐accuracy upwind method using improved characteristics speeds for incompressible flows

In this study, the Nervier–Stokes equations for incompressible flows, modified by the artificial compressibility method, are investigated numerically. To calculate the convective fluxes, a new high‐accuracy characteristics‐based (HACB) scheme is presented in this paper. Comparing the HACB scheme with the original characteristic‐based method, it is found that the new proposed scheme is more accurate and has faster convergence rate than the older one. The second order averaging scheme is used for estimating the viscose fluxes, and spatially discretized equations are integrated in time by an explicit fourth‐order Runge–Kutta scheme. The lid driven cavity flow and flow in channel with a backward facing step have been used as benchmark problems. It is shown that the obtained results using HACB scheme are in good agreement with the standard solutions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An improvement for multidimensional characteristic‐based scheme by using different selected waves

In this study, an improved multidimensional characteristic‐based (MCB) scheme, used for calculation of incompressible flows via artificial compressibility method, is presented. The new idea uses four different waves instead of traditional waves, which were used in the original MCB scheme corresponding to coordinate axes. In the new selection of waves, the number of compatibility relations is increased to eight, and therefore, more information reaches to each face in order to estimate convective fluxes. Numerical tests show that the new improved MCB scheme is faster in terms of convergence and demonstrates the same accuracy by the older one. Also, it needs less CPU time in comparison with traditional MCB scheme for running the computer code at the same conditions. The new scheme is able to use higher CFL numbers compared with the old MCB scheme. Results obtained by the new proposed method are in good agreement with the benchmark solutions at the wide range of Reynolds numbers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.