Ünver Özkol

Determination of kozeny constant based on porosity and pore to throat size ratio in porous medium with rectangular rods

Abstract Kozeny-Carman permeability equation is an important relation for the determination of permeability in porous media. In this study, the permeabilities of porous media that contains rectangular rods are determined, numerically. The applicability of Kozeny-Carman equation for the periodic porous media is investigated and the effects of porosity and pore to throat size ratio on Kozeny constant are studied. The continuity and Navier-Stokes equations are solved to determine the velocity and pressure fields in the voids between the rods. Based on the obtained flow field, the permeability values for different porosities from 0.2 to 0.9 and pore to throat size ratio values from 1.63 to 7.46 are computed. Then Kozeny constants for different porous media with various porosity and pore to throat size ratios are obtained and a relationship between Kozeny constant, porosity and pore to throat size ratio is constructed. The study reveals that the pore to throat size ratio is an important geometrical parameter that should be taken into account for deriving a correlation for permeability. The suggestion of a fixed value for Kozeny constant makes the application of Kozeny-Carman permeability equation too narrow for a very specific porous medium. However, it is possible to apply the Kozeny-Carman permeability equation for wide ranges of porous media with different geometrical parameters (various porosity, hydraulic diameter, particle size and aspect ratio) if Kozeny constant is a function of two parameters as porosity and pore to throat size ratios.

Effect of urban geometry on pedestrian-level wind velocity

The orientation of the streets and the height of continuous buildings cut off summer breezes and the prevailing wind in Izmir, Turkey. Compared with the northern parts of Turkey, the summer period in Izmir is relatively hot, humid and long. Due to the dense urban structure and the expansion of hard surface materials, the temperature in the city centre is higher than this centres surroundings and this effect is called the urban heat island. Consequently, pedestrian comfort in the city drops dramatically especially in locations where the wind flow is obstructed by buildings. In addition, natural ventilation through the building façades is weakened due to the low average wind speed in the streets. For better outdoor and indoor comfort the citizens in Izmir should benefit from the prevailing wind and summer breezes locally named ‘imbat’ in the sea-land direction. Therefore, the existing situation is examined through the field study in order to understand the natural ventilation potential at the pedestrian level in the selected main streets in Izmir.

An extension of the streamline curvature through-flow design method for bypass fans of turbofan engines:

The two-dimensional through-flow modeling of turbomachinery is still one of the most powerful tools available to the turbomachinery industry for aerodynamic design, analysis, and post-processing of test data due to its robustness and speed. Although variety of aspects of such a modeling approach are discussed in the publicly available literature for compressors and turbines, not much emphasis is placed on combined modeling of the fan and the downstream splitter of turbofan engines. The current article addresses this void by presenting a streamline curvature through-flow methodology that is suitable for inverse design for such a problem. A new split-flow method for the streamline solver, alternative to the publicly available analysis-oriented method, is implemented and initially compared with two-dimensional axisymmetric computational fluid dynamics on two representative geometries for high and low bypass ratios. The empirical models for incidence, deviation, loss, and end-wall blockage are compiled from the literature and calibrated against two test cases: experimental data of NASA two-stage fan and three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics of a custom-designed transonic fan stage. Finally, experimental validation against GE-NASA bypass fan case is accomplished to validate the complete methodology. The proposed method is a simple extension of streamline curvature method and can be applied to existing compressor methodologies with minimum numerical effort.

Off-Design Analysis of Transonic Bypass Fan Systems Using Streamline Curvature Through-Flow Method

Abstract The two-dimensional streamline curvature through-flow modeling of turbomachinery is still a key element for turbomachinery preliminary analysis. Basically, axisymmetric swirling flow field is solved numerically. The effects of blades are imposed as sources of swirl, work input/output and entropy generation. Although the topic is studied vastly in the literature for compressors and turbines, combined modeling of the transonic fan and the downstream splitter of turbofan engine configuration, to the authors’ best knowledge, is limited. In a prior study, the authors presented a new method for bypass fan modeling for inverse design calculations. Moreover, new set of practical empirical correlations are calibrated and validated. This paper is an extension of this study to rapid off-design analysis of transonic by-pass fan systems. The methodology is validated by two test cases: NASA 2-stage fan and GE-NASA bypass fan case. The proposed methodology is a simple extension for streamline curvature method and can be applied to existing compressor methodologies with minimum numerical effort.

Aerodynamic optimization of through-flow design model of a high by-pass transonic aero-engine fan using genetic algorithm

This study deals with aerodynamic optimization of a high by-pass transonic aero-engine fan module in a through-flow inverse design model at cruise condition. To the authors’ best knowledge, although the literature contains through-flow optimization of the simplified cases of compressors and turbines, an optimization study targeting the more elaborate case of combined transonic fan and splitter through-flow model is not considered in the literature. Such a through-flow optimization of a transonic fan, combined with bypass and core streams separated by an aerodynamically shaped flow splitter, possesses significant challenges to any optimizer, due to highly non-linear nature of the problem and the high number of constraints, including the fulfillment of the targeted bypass ratio. It is the aim of this study to consider this previously untouched area in detail and therefore present a more sophisticated and accurate optimization environment for actual bypass fan systems. An in-house optimization code using genetic algorithm is coupled with a previously developed in-house through-flow solver which is using a streamline curvature technique and a set of in-house calibrated empirical models for incidence, deviation, loss and blockage. As the through-flow models are the backbone of turbomachinery design, and great majority of design decisions are taken in this phase, such a study is assessed to result in significant guidelines to the gas turbine community.

A pore scale analysis for determination of interfacial convective heat transfer coefficient for thin periodic porous media under mixed convection

Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine interfacial convective heat transfer coefficient numerically, for a porous media consisting of square blocks in inline arrangement under mixed convection heat transfer. Design/methodology/approach The continuity, momentum and energy equations are solved in dimensionless form for a representative elementary volume of porous media, numerically. The velocity and temperature fields for different values of porosity, Ri and Re numbers are obtained. The study is performed for the range of Ri number from 0.01 to 10, Re number from 100 to 500 and porosity value from 0.51 to 0.96. Based on the obtained results, the value of the interfacial convective heat transfer coefficient is calculated by using volume average method. Findings It was found that at low porosities (such as 0.51), the interfacial Nusselt number does not considerably change with Ri and Re numbers. However, for porous media with high Ri number and porosity (such as 10 and 0.51, respectively), secondary flows occur in the middle of the channel between rods improving heat transfer between solid and fluid, considerably. It is shown that the available correlations of interfacial heat transfer coefficient suggested for forced convection can be used for mixed convection for the porous media with low porosity (such as 0.51) or for the flow with low Ri number (such as 0.01). Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no study on determination of interfacial convective heat transfer coefficient for mixed convection in porous media in literature. The present study might be the first study providing an accurate idea on the range of this important parameter, which will be useful particularly for researchers who study on mixed convection heat transfer in porous media, macroscopically.

Development of a New Universal Inverse Through-Flow Program and Method for Fully Coupled Split-Flow Turbomachinery Systems

Streamline curvature technique for inverse through-flow modeling of turbomachinery is still one of the most prevalent alternatives in design. Even though the subject has been studied in numerous aspects over many years, open literature on fully coupled split-flow turbomachinery system design which is encountered in turbofan engines, is still limited. The principal method, viable for analysis mode, may easily give rise to undesired streamline distortion near the splitter leading edge whilst operating in design mode. Besides, spanwise discontinuity of flow properties along the stagnation streamline prior to final solution convergence may be another outcome.The present study is geared towards eliminating these potential drawbacks by developing an alternative generally-applicable split-flow scheme incorporated in a recently developed streamline curvature software. This new scheme disposes the need to define a stagnation streamline, while preserving full coupling between the main and split ducts. This is achieved through removal of by-pass ratio restriction, which makes local velocity vector always perfectly aligned with the splitter leading edge without any limit on fan-splitter axial distance. A two-step validation strategy is followed: Firstly, 2D split-flow solutions of the developed method for representative duct geometries having design by-pass ratios ranging between 0.25 and 6.5, but without turbomachinery, are compared with a commercial CFD software; Secondly, the method is compared with 3D viscous CFD solution of NASA Rotor 37 geometry, whose flowpath is modified to include a downstream flowpath splitter.It is shown that the proposed scheme can be used as a practical alternative to the conventional treatment that promises minimal effort to implement to an existing compressor streamline curvature methodology.Copyright