An immersed boundary method for particles and bubbles in magnetohydrodynamic flows

This thesis presents a numerical method for the phase-resolving simulation of rigid particles and deformable bubbles in viscous, magnetohydrodynamic flows. The presented approach features solid robustness and high numerical efficiency. The implementation is three-dimensional and fully parallel suiting the needs of modern high-performance computing. In addition to the steps towards magnetohydrodynamics, the thesis covers method development with respect to the immersed boundary method which can be summarized in simple words by From rigid spherical particles to deformable bubbles. The development comprises the extension of an existing immersed boundary method to non-spherical particles and very low particle-to-fluid density ratios. A detailed study is dedicated to the complex interaction of particle shape, wake and particle dynamics. Furthermore, the representation of deformable bubble shapes, i.e. the coupling of the bubble shape to the fluid loads, is accounted for. The topic of bubble interaction is surveyed including bubble collision and coalescence and a new coalescence model is introduced. The thesis contains applications of the method to simulations of the rise of a single bubble and a bubble chain in liquid metal with and without magnetic field highlighting the major effects of the field on the bubble dynamics and the flow field. The effect of bubble coalescence is quantified for two closely adjacent bubble chains. A framework for large-scale simulations with many bubbles is provided to study complex multiphase phenomena like bubble-turbulence interaction in an efficient manner

New developments in rain–wind-induced vibrations of cables

On wet and windy days, the inclined cables of cable stayed bridges can experience large amplitude, potentially damaging oscillations known as rain-wind-induced vibration (RWIV). RWIV is believed to be the result of a complicated non-linear interaction between rivulets of rain water that run down the cables and the wind loading on the cables from the unsteady aerodynamics; however, despite a considerable international research effort, the underlying physical mechanism that governs this oscillation is still not satisfactorily understood. An international workshop on RWIV was held in April 2008, hosted at the University of Strathclyde. The main outcomes of this workshop are summarised in the paper. A numerical method to investigate aspects of the RWIV phenomenon has recently been developed by the authors, which couples an unsteady aerodynamic solver to a thin-film model based on lubrication theory for the flow of the rain water to ascertain the motion of the rivulets owing to the unsteady aerodynamic field. This novel numerical technique, which is still in the relatively early stages of development, has already provided useful information on the coupling between the external aerodynamic flow and the rivulet, and a summary of some of the key results to date is presented

A Fast Hybrid Pressure-Correction Algorithm for Simulating Incompressible Flows by Projection Methods

For simulating incompressible flows by projection methods. it is generally accepted that the pressure-correction stage is the most time-consuming part of the flow solver. The objective of the present work is to develop a fast hybrid pressure-correction algorithm for numerical simulation of incompressible flows around obstacles in the context of projection methods. The key idea is to adopt different numerical methods/discretizations in the sub-steps of projection methods. Here, a classical second-order time-marching projection method which consists of two sub-steps is chosen for the purpose of demonstration. In the first sub-step, the momentum equations are discretized on unstructured grids and solved by conventional numerical methods, here, a meshless method. In the second sub-step (pressure-correction), the proposed algorithm adopts a double discretization system and combines the weighted least squares approximation with the essence of immersed boundary methods. Such a design allows us to develop a FFT-based solver to speed up the solution of the pressure Poisson equation for flow cases with obstacles, while keeping the implementation of boundary conditions for the momentum equations as easy as conventional numerical methods do with unstructured grids. Numerical experiments of five test cases have been performed to verify and validate the proposed hybrid algorithm and evaluate its computational performance. The results show that the new FFT-based hybrid algorithm is working and robust, and it is significantly faster than the multigrid-based reference method. The hybrid algorithm opens an avenue for the development of next-generation high-performance parallel computational fluid dynamics solvers for incompressible flows