Streamers in gas discharge devices

Streamers are ionization waves in gas discharge devices, modelled here as travelling wave solutions of a drift-diffusion model for the transport of electrons and ions. The existence of a certain type of small amplitude streamers is proved by applying results from the theory of singularly perturbed ordinary differential equations. Global information is obtained from a large activation energy analysis.

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Zusammenfassung Streamer sind lonisierungswellen in Gasentladungsröhren, die hier durch wandernde Wellenlösungen eines Drift-Diffusionsmodelles für den Transport von Elektronen und Ionen beschrieben werden. Die Existenz von Wellen eines bestimmten Typs mit kleiner Amplitude wird mit Hilfe von Resultaten über singulär gestörte gewöhnliche Differentialgleichungen bewiesen. Globale Information liefert eine Störungsanalyse für große Aktivierungsenergie.

     

Efficient numerical methods for radiation in gas turbines

Numerical methods for radiative heat transfer equations coupled to a temperature equation are considered. Efficient solution methods and approximate equations for this system are investigated and a comparative numerical study of the different approximations is given. The approximate equations considered in this paper include moment methods and diffusive approximations. Fast iterative solvers for the problem like multilevel methods with suitable preconditioning are considered in detail. Numerical experiments and comparisons in different space dimensions and for various physical situations are presented.     

多项式回归的建模方法比较研究

在实际工作中,人们在采用回归模型解释因果变量间的相关关系时,经常会遇到自变量之间存在幂乘关系的情况。在这种情况下,多项式回归模型成为一个合理的选择。由于多项式回归模型中自变量之间存在较强的相关关系,采用普通最小二乘回归方法来估计变量的回归系数,则会存在较大的误差。在本文中,为了提高多项式回归模型的预测准确性和可靠性,提出使用主成分分析、偏最小二乘回归建模,并采用仿真数据来比较它们的异同。     

Developments in modelling of gas injection and slag foaming

Gas injection into metallurgical ladles has been an active area of CFD modelling for many years. Recent work with both Eulerian and Lagrangian frameworks is presented for bottom stirring in ladle and steelmaking electric furnace configurations. Comparison with water and liquid metal results shows that the Lagrangian models provide a better representation of the systems. Slag foaming is an important phenomenon in smelting–reduction processes and electric furnace steelmaking. The void fraction in the foam is generally greater than 0.9, a regime that has received considerably less attention than bottom stirring where the local void fraction is less than 0.1. Again, it was found, by comparison with experimental data, that Lagrangian models were generally preferable over Eulerian models.     

Comparison of ODE methods for laminar reacting gas flow simulations

Two‐dimensional transient simulations are presented of the transport phenomena and multispecies, multireaction chemistry in chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The transient simulations are run until steady state, such that the steady state can be validated against the steady state solutions from literature. We compare various time integration methods in terms of efficiency and robustness. Besides stability, which is important due to the stiffness of the problem, preservation of non‐negativity is crucial. It appears that this latter condition on a time integration method is much more restrictive toward the time step size than stability. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2008     

Thermodynamics / turbulence analogy modelling dissipating molecular gas flows for high Knudsen numbers

Modelling micro channel flows momentum and heat diffusion / convection are recent parameters modelling the molecule velocity distribution. Macroscopic models describe velocity and energy / enthalpie with integrals of mass increments. Using microscopic models motion and forces of a molecular flow have to be computed by models of physical properties, whose are described by statistical power moments of the molecule velocity. Therefore dilute flows have to be investigated in small channels with a mean free path length of molecules higher than the channel width of the the micro channel itself (λ₀≥H₀). Modelling this process by a continuous flow the boundary conditions have to be modified (e.g. [6]). The present model uses the statistical approximation of the molecule velocity distribution to simulate the behaviour of this discrete flow with a weighted averaged molecule velocity ∼ξ_i, its standard deviation σ and the characterisic molecule collision rate z. The number density N per volume V near one position is used for the weighting factor averaging method describing the mean molecule velocity. The present model is validated computing Poiseuille and Couette flows with different Knudsen numbers. Showing the advantages of the present model the simulation results are compared with simulation results of the wall–distance depending diffusivity model of Lockerby and Reese [4] and BGK results of a Lattice–Boltzmann simulation. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Dynamic modelling and performance study of solar gas tunnel dryer

The work presented in this article focuses on the analysis and modelling of heat and mass transfers in the tunnel dryer during the drying of agricultural products. The main objective of this work is to establish a global modelling of the studied system based on the bond graph methodology. The pseudo-bond graph methodology was used in modelling the system. Such methodology was very suitable for this thermal process since it allows good management of the nonlinearity present in the system.

The thermal performance of the proposed dryer is analysed by solving the various energy balance equations. An application of drying tomatoes was achieved and a fair agreement was observed between predicted and experimental results.     

On gas dynamic effects in the modelling of laser cutting processes

In this paper the author addresses the modelling of the laser cutting process. Despite the attention paid to this process by the scientific community, the underlying physical phenomena are still only marginally understood. The models used in the literature are often highly simplified and focus on single effects such as exothermic reactions of the melt with the assist gas whilst neglecting other important physical mechanisms. In this work a three-dimensional fully coupled model for the laser cutting process is used. It will be shown by the author that simplifications like reduction in model dimension are not admissible for the investigation of the complete process. However, it has also been found by the author that currently available computer hardware is not capable of producing results at the necessary rate and cost required for parametric studies. Results from two simulation runs, which were performed in course of a larger study amounting to 17 300 cpu hours on a SGI origin 3400 system, are presented. Nevertheless, these results form a cautionary example with regard to the numerical models applied and assumptions frequently introduced by other authors.     

Computational fluid dynamics modelling of gas jets impinging onto liquid pools

Gas jets impinging onto a gas–liquid interface of a liquid pool are studied using computational fluid dynamics modelling, which aims to obtain a better understanding of the behaviour of the gas jets used metallurgical engineering industry. The gas and liquid flows are modelled using the volume of fluid technique. The governing equations are formulated using the density and viscosity of the “gas–liquid mixture”, which are described in terms of the phase volume fraction. Reynolds averaging is applied to yield a set of Reynolds-averaged conservation equations for the mass and momentum, and the k–ε turbulence model. The deformation of the gas–liquid interface is modelled by the pressure jump across the interface via the Young–Laplace equation. The governing equations in the axisymmetric cylindrical coordinates are solved using the commercial CFD code, FLUENT. The computed results are compared with experimental and theoretical data reported in the literature. The CFD modelling allows the simultaneous evaluation of the gas flow field, the free liquid surface and the bulk liquid flow, and provides useful insight to the highly complex, and industrially significant flows in the jetting system.     

Object-oriented modelling and simulation of heat exchangers with finite element methods

The paper describes the derivation of finite-element models of one-dimensional fluid flows with heat transfer in pipes, using the Galerkin/least-squares approach. The models are first derived for one-phase flows, and then extended to homogeneous two-phase flows. The resulting equations have then been embedded in the context of object-oriented system modelling; this allows one to combine the fluid flow model with a model for other phenomena such as heat transfer, as well as with models of other discrete components such as pumps or valves, to obtain complex models of heat exchangers. The models are then validated by simulating a typical heat exchanger plant.     

Propensity score modelling in observational studies using dimension reduction methods

Conditional independence assumptions are very important in causal inference modelling as well as in dimension reduction methodologies. These are two very strikingly different statistical literatures, and we study links between the two in this article. The concept of covariate sufficiency plays an important role, and we provide theoretical justification when dimension reduction and partial least squares methods will allow for valid causal inference to be performed. The methods are illustrated with application to a medical study and to simulated data.     

Iterative versus direct parallel substructuring methods in semiconductor device modelling

The numerical simulation of semiconductor devices is extremely demanding in term of computational time because it involves complex embedded numerical schemes. At the kernel of these schemes is the solution of very ill‐conditioned large linear systems. In this paper, we present the various ingredients of some hybrid iterative schemes that play a central role in the robustness of these solvers when they are embedded in other numerical procedures. On a set of two‐dimensional unstructured mixed finite element problems representative of semiconductor simulation, we perform a fair and detailed comparison between parallel iterative and direct linear solution techniques. We show that iterative solvers can be robust enough to solve the very challenging linear systems that arise in those simulations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quasi-stationary solitons for Langmuir waves in plasmas

The multiple-scale perturbation analysis is used to study the perturbed nonlinear Schrödinger’s equation, that describes the Langmuir waves in plasmas. The perturbation terms include the non-local term due to nonlinear Landau damping. The WKB type ansatz is used to define the phase of the soliton that captures the corrections to the pulse where the standard soliton perturbation theory fails.     

Envelop solitons in dusty plasmas for warm dust

A nonlinear Schrödinger equation is obtained for the warm dusty plasmas. The modulational instability of envelop soliton is investigated in this paper. Both the temperature of the dust grains and the charge variations of dust grains affect the instability regions of the dusty plasmas. It also affect the amplitude and the width of the envelop soliton.     

Optimization methods for pipeline transportation of natural gas with variable specific gravity and compressibility

In this paper, the problem of flow maximization in pipeline systems for transmission of natural gas is addressed. We extend previously suggested models by incorporating the variation in pipeline flow capacities with gas specific gravity and compressibility. Flow capacities are modeled as functions of pressure, compressibility and specific gravity by the commonly-used Weymouth equation, and the California Natural Gas Association method is used to model compressibility as a function of specific gravity and pressure. The sources feeding the transmission network do not necessarily supply gas with equal specific gravity. In our model, it is assumed that when different flow streams enter a junction point, the specific gravity of the resulting flow is a weighted average of the specific gravities of entering flows. We also assume the temperature to be constant, and the system to be in steady state. Since the proposed model is non-convex, and global optimization hence can be time consuming, we also propose a heuristic method based on an iterative scheme in which a simpler NLP model is solved in each iteration. Computational experiments are conducted in order to assess the computability of the model by applying a global optimizer, and to evaluate the performance of the heuristic approach. When applied to a wide set of test instances, the heuristic method provides solutions with deviations less than 10% from optimality, and in many instances turns out to be exact. We also report several experiments demonstrating that letting the compressibility and the specific gravity be global constants can lead to significant errors in the estimates of the total network capacity.