Modeling of plasma jets with superimposed vortex flow

This work is concerned with analytical studies of thermal plasma jets, which are finding increasing interest for thermal plasma processing. A two-dimensional model for turbulent plasma jets with superimposed vortex flow has been developed, incorporating multiple time scales for velocity and temperature fluctuations and a density-weighted averaging for the density fluctuation effect. Results show that adding swirl to the flow field for confined and free jets induces strong axial and radial pressure gradients near the nozzle exit, causing a rapid decay of the axial velocity with increasing distance from the nozzle. Comparisons with cold flow show similar trends close to the nozzle exit, but further downstream, the axial velocities increase again, especially for larges swirl numbers. Comparisons of theoretical predictions based on the present model with available experimental data are, in general, in reasonable agreement.     

The effect of a coriolis force on Taylor-Couette flow

Taylor-Couette flow subject to a Coriolis force is studied experimentally and numerically. In the experiment, the Couette apparatus is mounted on a turntable with the axis of the cylinders orthogonal to the rotation vector of the turntable. The Coriolis force stabilizes the fluid against the onset of Taylor vortices and alters the velocity fields, both above and below the transition from the initial flow. At small dimensionless turntable frequencies, the transition yields time-independent Taylor vortices which are tilted with respect to the cylinder axis. At larger there is a direct transition to turbulence. We determine the first-order correction to the classical Couette initial flow, to account for the effects of the Coriolis force, by expanding in powers of. We present numerical results for the axial velocity (the only nonvanishing correction term to order) in the infinite-cylinder approximation.     

涡流发生器污垢特性实验台的设计

为了研究涡流发生器的污垢特性设计了一个能够在线监测温度、流量以及压差进而可以直接得到污垢热阻的实验台。通过验证实验、准确性分析与误差分析,验证了实验台设计精度在允许的误差范围内。示例实验结果表明实验台具有研究涡流发生器的污垢特性、压力特性以及换热特性的功能。     

Three‐dimensional vortex simulation of unsteady flow in hydraulic turbines

On the basis of the Helmholtz decomposition, a grid‐free numerical scheme is provided for the solution of unsteady flow in hydraulic turbines. The Lagrangian vortex method is utilized to evaluate the convection and stretch of the vorticity, and the BEM is used to solve the Neumann problem to define the potential flow. The no‐slip boundary condition is satisfied by generating vortex sticks at the solid surface. A semi‐analytical regularization technique is applied to evaluate the singular boundary surface integrals of the potential velocity and its gradients accurately. The fast multipole method was extended to evaluate the velocity and velocity gradients induced by the discretized vortex blobs in the Lagrangian vortex method. The successful simulation for the unsteady flow through a hydraulic turbine's runner has manifested the effectiveness of the proposed method. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Topological textures and their bifurcation processes in 2D ferromagnetic thin films

In this paper, by the use of the topological current theory, the topological structures and the dynamic processes in thin-film ferromagnetic systems are investigated directly from the viewpoint of topology. It is found that the topological charge of a thin-film ferromagnetic system can be changed by annihilation or creation processes of opposite polarized vortex–antivortex pairs taking place at space–time singularities of the normalized magnetization vector field of the system, the variation of the topological charge is integer and can further be expressed in terms of the Hopf indices and Brouwer degrees of the magnetization vector field around the singularities. Moreover, the change of the topological charge of the system is crucial to vortex core reversal processes in ferromagnetic thin films. With the help of the topological current theory and implicit function theorem, the processes of vortex merging, splitting as well as vortex core reversal are discussed in detail.     

Closure modeling in bridging regions of variable-resolution (VR) turbulence computations

Optimal utilization of computational resources mandates spatio-temporal variation in resolution for computing complex engineering flows. Closure modeling in regions bridging between different resolutions is rendered difficult due to changing interactions between resolved and unresolved fields. We develop a closure model for the bridging region based on energy conservation principles. Then we proceed to provide a proof of concept in decaying isotropic turbulence with temporally varying resolution. The simplicity of the flow permits a thorough examination of various aspects of the proposed closure not feasible in more complex flows. The results demonstrate the potential promise of the approach, but more validation studies need to be performed.While the present development is in the context of partially averaged Navier–Stokes (PANS) method, the closure principle should apply for other variable-resolution (VR) approaches.     

A class of finite difference schemes for interface problems with an HOC approach

In this paper, we propose a new methodology for numerically solving elliptic and parabolic equations with discontinuous coefficients and singular source terms. This new scheme is obtained by clubbing a recently developed higher‐order compact methodology with special interface treatment for the points just next to the points of discontinuity. The overall order of accuracy of the scheme is at least second. We first formulate the scheme for one‐dimensional (1D) problems, and then extend it directly to two‐dimensional (2D) problems in polar coordinates. In the process, we also perform convergence and related analysis for both the cases. Finally, we show a new direction of implementing the methodology to 2D problems in cartesian coordinates. We then conduct numerous numerical studies on a number of problems, both for 1D and 2D cases, including the flow past circular cylinder governed by the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. We compare our results with existing numerical and experimental results. In all the cases, our formulation is found to produce better results on coarser grids. For the circular cylinder problem, the scheme used is seen to capture all the flow characteristics including the famous von Kármán vortex street. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Generation and Propagation of Optical Superoscillatory Vortex Arrays

Superoscillation is an intriguing wave phenomenon which enables subwavelength features propagating into far field and hence has potential applications in super‐resolution microscopy as well as particle trapping and manipulation. While previous demonstrations mostly concentrate on designing complicated nanostructures for generating uncontrollable superoscillatory functions, here a new technique which allows for creating polynomially shaped superoscillatory functions that contain phase singularity arrays is demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally. Such a technique is implemented in optical experiments for the first time and controllable superoscillatory lobes with feature much below the diffraction limit is achieved. More importantly, a general theoretical framework, which, to our knowledge, has not been reported before, is developed to show how the created superoscillations propagate to a distance of many Rayleigh ranges and eventually disappear when the distance is sufficiently larger. The validity of the model is confirmed by the experiments. The results may trigger further studies in light field shaping and manipulations in subwavelength scale.     

Accuracy of high‐order density‐based compressible methods in low Mach vortical flows

At low Mach numbers, Godunov‐type approaches, based on the method of lines, suffer from an accuracy problem. This paper shows the importance of using the low Mach number correction in Godunov‐type methods for simulations involving low Mach numbers by utilising a new, well‐posed, two‐dimensional, two‐mode Kelvin–Helmholtz test case. Four independent codes have been used, enabling the examination of several numerical schemes. The second‐order and fifth‐order accurate Godunov‐type methods show that the vortex‐pairing process can be captured on a low resolution with the low Mach number correction applied down to 0.002. The results are compared without the low Mach number correction and also three other methods, a Lagrange‐remap method, a fifth‐order accurate in space and time finite difference type method based on the wave propagation algorithm, and fifth‐order spatial and third‐order temporal accurate finite volume Monotone Upwind Scheme for Conservation Laws (MUSCL) approach based on the Godunov method and Simple Low Dissipation Advection Upstream Splitting Method (SLAU) numerical flux with low Mach capture property. The ability of the compressible flow solver of the commercial software, ANSYS FLUENT , in solving low Mach flows is also demonstrated for the two time‐stepping methods provided in the compressible flow solver, implicit and explicit. Results demonstrate clearly that a low Mach correction is required for all algorithms except the Lagrange‐remap approach, where dissipation is independent of Mach number. © 2013 Crown copyright. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.