1,582 research outputs found
Solenoidal and potential velocity fields in weakly turbulent premixed flames
Direct Numerical Simulation data obtained earlier from two statistically 1D,
planar, fully-developed, weakly turbulent, single-step-chemistry, premixed
flames characterized by two significantly different (7.53 and 2.50) density
ratios {\sigma} are analyzed to explore the influence of combustion-induced
thermal expansion on the turbulence and the backward influence of such flow
perturbations on the reaction-zone surface. For this purpose, the simulated
velocity fields are decomposed into solenoidal and potential velocity
subfields. The approach is justified by the fact that results obtained adopting
(i) a widely used orthogonal Helmholtz-Hodge decomposition and (ii) a recently
introduced natural decomposition are close in the largest part of the
computational domain (including the entire mean flame brushes) except for
narrow zones near the inlet and outlet boundaries. The results show that
combustion-induced thermal expansion can significantly change turbulent flow of
unburned mixture upstream of a premixed flame by generating potential velocity
fluctuations. Within the flame brush, the potential and solenoidal velocity
fields are negatively (positively) correlated in unburned reactants (burned
products, respectively) provided that {\sigma}=7.53. Moreover, correlation
between strain rates generated by the solenoidal and potential velocity fields
and conditioned to the reaction zone is positive (negative) in the leading
(trailing, respectively) halves of the mean flame brushes. Furthermore, the
potential strain rate correlates negatively with the curvature of the reaction
zone, whereas the solenoidal strain rate and the curvature are negatively
(positively) correlated in the leading (trailing, respectively) halves of the
mean flame brushes.Comment: The work is accepted for oral presentation at the 38th Symposium
(International) on Combustion. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap
with arXiv:2007.0833
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MODELING CHAIN PACKING IN COMPLEX PHASES OF SELF-ASSEMBLED BLOCK COPOLYMERS
Block copolymer (BCP) melts undergo microphase seperation and form ordered soft matter crystals with varying domain shapes and symmetries. We study the con- nection between diblock copolymer molecular designs and thermodynamic selection of ordered crystals by modeling features of variable sub-domain geometry filled with individual blocks within non-canonical sphere-like and network phases that together with layered, cylindrical and canonical spherical phases forms “natural forms” of self- assembled amphiphilic soft matter at large. First, we present a model to revise our understanding of optimal Frank-Kasper sphere-like morphologies by advancing the- ory to account for varying domain volumes. We then develop generic approaches to quantify local changes to domain thickness or packing frustration using medial sets and show its application to morphologies with arbitrary domain topologies and sym- metries in both theoretical models and experimental data. We further use medial sets as a proxy for terminal boundaries of blocks within different domains and revise thermodynamic models of BCP assembly in the strong segregation limit. Finally, we use this revised model to study effect of elastic stiffness asymmetry on relaxing packing frustration experienced by BCPs in tubular and matrix domains leading to equilibrium double gyroid network morphology in diblock copolymers
Effects of thermal expansion on moderately intense turbulence in premixed flames
This study aims at analytically and numerically exploring the influence of combustion-induced thermal expansion on turbulence in premixed flames. In the theoretical part, contributions of solenoidal and potential velocity fluctuations to the unclosed component of the advection term in the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations are compared, and a new criterion for assessing the importance of the thermal expansion effects is introduced. The criterion highlights a ratio of the dilatation in the laminar flame to the large-scale gradient of root mean square (rms) velocity in the turbulent flame brush. To support the theoretical study, direct numerical simulation (DNS) data obtained earlier from two complex-chemistry, lean H2-air flames are analyzed. In line with the new criterion, even at sufficiently high Karlovitz numbers, the results show significant influence of combustion-induced potential velocity fluctuations on the second moments of the turbulent velocity upstream of and within the flame brush. In particular, the DNS data demonstrate that (i) potential and solenoidal rms velocities are comparable in the unburnt gas close to the leading edge of the flame brush and (ii) potential and solenoidal rms velocities conditioned to unburnt gas are comparable within the entire flame brush. Moreover, combustion-induced thermal expansion affects not only the potential velocity but even the solenoidal one. The latter effects manifest themselves in a negative correlation between solenoidal velocity fluctuations and dilatation or in the counter-gradient behavior of the solenoidal scalar flux. Finally, a turbulence-in-premixed-flame diagram is sketched to discuss the influence of combustion-induced thermal expansion on various ranges of turbulence spectrum
Stable Frank-Kasper phases of self-assembled, soft matter spheres
Single molecular species can self-assemble into Frank Kasper (FK) phases,
finite approximants of dodecagonal quasicrystals, defying intuitive notions
that thermodynamic ground states are maximally symmetric. FK phases are
speculated to emerge as the minimal-distortional packings of space-filling
spherical domains, but a precise quantitation of this distortion and how it
affects assembly thermodynamics remains ambiguous. We use two complementary
approaches to demonstrate that the principles driving FK lattice formation in
diblock copolymers emerge directly from the strong-stretching theory of
spherical domains, in which minimal inter-block area competes with minimal
stretching of space-filling chains. The relative stability of FK lattices is
studied first using a diblock foam model with unconstrained particle volumes
and shapes, which correctly predicts not only the equilibrium {\sigma} lattice,
but also the unequal volumes of the equilibrium domains. We then provide a
molecular interpretation for these results via self-consistent field theory,
illuminating how molecular stiffness regulates the coupling between
intra-domain chain configurations and the asymmetry of local packing. These
findings shed new light on the role of volume exchange on the formation of
distinct FK phases in copolymers, and suggest a paradigm for formation of FK
phases in soft matter systems in which unequal domain volumes are selected by
the thermodynamic competition between distinct measures of shape asymmetry.Comment: 40 pages, 22 figure
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