The conjugation of ionic flows in the diffusion layers of electrodialysis systems

Fundamental regularities of the ion interference in diffusion layers of electrodialysis systems are revealed, as well as their effect on the electrical field strength, through which the ionic flows in their turn affect each other.     

Integrated optimization of customer and supplier logistics at Robert Bosch LLC

Large automotive supply chains typically involve manufacturers pulling materials from their suppliers along the chain, usually by using round-trip truckload routes. The return trips on these routes are used to return empty containers back to the suppliers. The mismatch between the amount of materials and empty containers results in underutilization of the return trips. A supplier can utilize this unused capacity by identifying a subset of promising customer routes that can be combined with its existing supplier routes to save overall costs of the system. Such an integration also leads to other supply chain coordination benefits such as the potential of using crossdocks, more frequent milkruns and ensuing reductions in inventories.     

Implementing a high‐order accurate implicit operator scheme for solving steady incompressible viscous flows using artificial compressibility method

This paper uses a fourth‐order compact finite‐difference scheme for solving steady incompressible flows. The high‐order compact method applied is an alternating direction implicit operator scheme, which has been used by Ekaterinaris for computing two‐dimensional compressible flows. Herein, this numerical scheme is efficiently implemented to solve the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in the primitive variables formulation using the artificial compressibility method. For space discretizing the convective fluxes, fourth‐order centered spatial accuracy of the implicit operators is efficiently obtained by performing compact space differentiation in which the method uses block‐tridiagonal matrix inversions. To stabilize the numerical solution, numerical dissipation terms and/or filters are used. In this study, the high‐order compact implicit operator scheme is also extended for computing three‐dimensional incompressible flows. The accuracy and efficiency of this high‐order compact method are demonstrated for different incompressible flow problems. A sensitivity study is also conducted to evaluate the effects of grid resolution and pseudocompressibility parameter on accuracy and convergence rate of the solution. The effects of filtering and numerical dissipation on the solution are also investigated. Test cases considered herein for validating the results are incompressible flows in a 2‐D backward facing step, a 2‐D cavity and a 3‐D cavity at different flow conditions. Results obtained for these cases are in good agreement with the available numerical and experimental results. The study shows that the scheme is robust, efficient and accurate for solving incompressible flow problems. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A geometry‐based level set method for curvilinear overset grids with application to ship hydrodynamics

In a previous work (Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2007; 55 :867–897), we presented a two‐phase level set method to simulate air/water turbulent flows using curvilinear body‐fitted grids for ship hydrodynamics problems. This two‐phase level set method explicitly enforces jump conditions across the interface, thus resulting in a fully coupled representation of the air/water flow. Though the method works well with multiblock curvilinear grids, severe robustness problems were found when attempting to use it with overset grids. The problem was tracked to small unphysical level set discontinuities across the overset grids with large differences in curvature. Though negligible for single‐phase approaches, the problem magnifies with large density differences between the phases, causing computation failures. In this paper, we present a geometry‐based level set method for curvilinear overset grids that overcomes these difficulties. The level set transport and reinitialization equations are not discretized along grid coordinates, but along the upwind streamline and level set gradient directions, respectively. The method is essentially an unstructured approach that is transparent to the differences between overset grids, but still the discretization is under the framework of a finite differences approach. As a result, significant improvements in robustness and to a less extent in accuracy are achieved for the level set function interpolation between overset grids, especially with big differences in grid curvature. Example tests are shown for the case of bow breaking waves around the surface combatant model David Taylor Model Basin (DTMB) 5415 and for the steady‐state ONR Tumblehome DTMB 5613 with superstructure. In the first case, the results are compared against experimental data available and in the second against results of a semi‐coupled method. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A marker‐and‐cell approach to free surface 2‐D multiphase flows

This work describes a methodology to simulate free surface incompressible multiphase flows. This novel methodology allows the simulation of multiphase flows with an arbitrary number of phases, each of them having different densities and viscosities. Surface and interfacial tension effects are also included. The numerical technique is based on the GENSMAC front‐tracking method. The velocity field is computed using a finite‐difference discretization of a modification of the Navier–Stokes equations. These equations together with the continuity equation are solved for the two‐dimensional multiphase flows, with different densities and viscosities in the different phases. The governing equations are solved on a regular Eulerian grid, and a Lagrangian mesh is employed to track free surfaces and interfaces. The method is validated by comparing numerical with analytic results for a number of simple problems; it was also employed to simulate complex problems for which no analytic solutions are available. The method presented in this paper has been shown to be robust and computationally efficient. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Second-order moment modeling of dispersed two-phase turbulence——Part 1:USM,k-ε-k_p,and non-linear k-ε-k_p two-phase turbulence models

Turbulent dispersed multiphase flows,including gas-particle,gas-droplet and bubble-liquid flows,are widely encountered in various engineering facilities.Modeling of two-phase turbulence,in particular the dispersed phase turbulence,is the key problem in the Eulerian-Eulerian simulation of practical dispersed multiphase flows.Although different models were developed and used,the experimental validation shows that they cannot always give satisfactory prediction results.In this paper the present author give a d...     

Extension of the local domain-free discretization method to large eddy simulation of turbulent flows

In this work, an immersed boundary method, called the local domain-free discretization (DFD) method, is extended to large eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent flows. The discrete form of partial differential equations at an interior node may involve some nodes outside the solution domain. The flow variables at these exterior dependent nodes are evaluated via linear extrapolation along the direction normal to the wall. To alleviate the requirement of mesh resolution in the near-wall region, a wall model based on the turbulence boundary layer equations is introduced. The wall shear stress yielded by the wall model and the no-penetration condition are enforced at the immersed boundary to evaluate the velocity components at an exterior dependent node. For turbulence closure, a dynamic subgrid scale (SGS) model is adopted and the Lagrangian averaging procedure is used to compute the model coefficient. The SGS eddy viscosity at an exterior dependent node is set to be equal to that at the outer layer. To maintain the mass conservation near the immersed boundary, a mass source/sink term is added into the continuity equation. Numerical experiments on relatively coarse meshes with stationary or moving solid boundaries have been conducted to verify the ability of the present LES-DFD method. The predicted results agree well with the published experimental or numerical data.     

Regularity of Weak Solutions to a Class of Complex Hessian Equations on Kähler Manifolds

We prove the smoothness of weak solutions to a class of complex Hessian equations on closed Kähler manifolds, by use of the smoothing property of the corresponding gradient flow.     

Multi-family scheduling in a two-machine reentrant flow shop with setups

This paper considers a two-machine multi-family scheduling problem with reentrant production flows. The problem consists of two machines, M₁ and M₂, and each job has the processing route (M₁, M₂, M₁, M₂). There are identical jobs in the same family and the jobs in the same family are processed in succession. Each machine needs a setup time before the first job in a family is processed. The objective is to minimize the maximum completion time. Examples of such a problem occur in the bridge construction, semiconductor industry and job processing on numerical controlled machines, where they usually require that the jobs are reprocessed once and there are identical jobs in the same family. This problem is shown to be NP-hard. A branch-and-bound algorithm is proposed, and computational experiments are provided.