Development of BEM for ceramic composites

It is evident that for proper micromechanical analysis of ceramic composites, one needs to use a numerical method that is capable of idealizing the individual fibers or individual bundles of fibers embedded within a three-dimensional ceramic matrix. The analysis must be able to account for high stress or temperature gradients from diffusion of stress or temperature from the fiber to the ceramic matrix and allow for interaction between the fibers through the ceramic matrix. The analysis must be sophisticated enough to deal with the failure of fibers described by a series of increasingly sophisticated constitutive models. Finally, the analysis must deal with micromechanical modeling of the composite under nonlinear thermal and dynamic loading. This report details progress made towards the development of a boundary element code designed for the micromechanical studies of an advanced ceramic composite. Additional effort has been made in generalizing the implementation to allow the program to be applicable to real problems in the aerospace industry

On 3-D inelastic analysis methods for hot section components (base program)

A 3-D Inelastic Analysis Method program is described. This program consists of a series of new computer codes embodying a progression of mathematical models (mechanics of materials, special finite element, boundary element) for streamlined analysis of: (1) combustor liners, (2) turbine blades, and (3) turbine vanes. These models address the effects of high temperatures and thermal/mechanical loadings on the local (stress/strain)and global (dynamics, buckling) structural behavior of the three selected components. Three computer codes, referred to as MOMM (Mechanics of Materials Model), MHOST (Marc-Hot Section Technology), and BEST (Boundary Element Stress Technology), have been developed and are briefly described in this report

State of the Art in the Optimisation of Wind Turbine Performance Using CFD

Wind energy has received increasing attention in recent years due to its sustainability and geographically wide availability. The efficiency of wind energy utilisation highly depends on the performance of wind turbines, which convert the kinetic energy in wind into electrical energy. In order to optimise wind turbine performance and reduce the cost of next-generation wind turbines, it is crucial to have a view of the state of the art in the key aspects on the performance optimisation of wind turbines using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), which has attracted enormous interest in the development of next-generation wind turbines in recent years. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art progress on optimisation of wind turbine performance using CFD, reviewing the objective functions to judge the performance of wind turbine, CFD approaches applied in the simulation of wind turbines and optimisation algorithms for wind turbine performance. This paper has been written for both researchers new to this research area by summarising underlying theory whilst presenting a comprehensive review on the up-to-date studies, and experts in the field of study by collecting a comprehensive list of related references where the details of computational methods that have been employed lately can be obtained