Promoting lab engagement in experimental compressible flow modelling

The present work depicts the development of an experimental equipment that reveals compressible fluid dynamics, while collecting data from an incompressible flow like water in an open-channel. It consists of an extensive theoretical framework followed by a practical analysis, the aim of which was to trigger the hydraulic jump, both normal and oblique, in order to illustrate its hydro-gasdynamic analogy with a shock wave, occurring in supersonic compressible flows. The assembly, called “water table”, arises from the necessity of economical alternatives to expensive supersonic wind tunnels in the experimental study of compressible flows. Thus, a canal based on a Laval nozzle was constructed where water flow could experiment a hydraulic jump. Through its visual and experimental perception, fellow interested could more easily understand the physics and engineering behind this phenomenon. Multiple design alternatives were evaluated considering environmental, economic, functional and aesthetic factors. A low-cost implementation was critical in the design process. The measurements revealed that the geometry of the nozzle and the wedges designed as obstacles to cause obliquity were the most influential elements in the formation of a hydraulic jump in the set-up. Regarding the experimental variables, the upstream and downstream heights had the highest relevance. Therefore, their manipulation and analysis could lead to further educational investigations. This research is a step forward to support students in the understanding of compressible flow principles by providing an in-house experimental set-up. The equipment is an opportunity of carrying out lab measurements, which certainly guides to a major commitment in the fieldPostprint (published version

In-house low-cost water table prototype to practically analyse the modelling compressible flow in a fluid engineering course

The present work studies the hydro-gasdynamic analogy between a shock wave, occurring in supersonic internal or external compressible flows, and a hydraulic jump, a sort of normal shock occurring in open-channel flows. It consists of an extensive theoretical framework followed by a practical analysis, the aim of which was to experimentally trigger the hydraulic jump, both normal and oblique, while using a low-cost designed lab prototype. The assembly development, called ‘water table’, arises from the necessity of economical alternatives to expensive supersonic wind tunnels in the experimental study of compressible fluid dynamics. With this objective in mind, a hydraulic canal based on a Laval nozzle was constructed where water flow could accelerate from subcritical to critical to supercritical regime and then return to subcritical regime through a hydraulic jump. In addition, multiple design alternatives were evaluated considering environmental, economic, functional and aesthetics factors. A low-cost implementation was the critical criterion in the design process. The measurements have revealed that the geometry of the nozzle and the wedges designed as obstacles to cause obliquity are the most significant and influential elements in the formation of a hydraulic jump in the experimental set-up. Regarding the experimental variables, the experiments demonstrate the effect of the upstream and downstream heights of the hydraulic jump in the data collection. This experience is a step forward in supporting students in the understanding of compressible flow and its principles by providing an in-house experimental set-up that promotes active learning, motivation and interest in fluid mechanicsPostprint (author's final draft

Flexible rod design for educational wind balance

This is a copy of the author 's preprint version of an article published in the journal Experimental techniques. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40799-016-0017-9This article provides a technical description of a flexible hinge for wind tunnel rigs. For academic purposes, the device was integrated into several rod flexures to build a home-made external wind balance system. The cylindrical elastic element incorporates several notches, and the flexure linkage is able to transmit force in the main axial direction without hindering perpendicular movement. The flexural element described here is simple and easily manufactured, and can also be used with other types of wind balance. The flexure described in this article has similar functionality to those mentioned in the reference section, but has a more compact element. The project's effectiveness was demonstrated in a series of experimental comparisons of forces and moments measured on a wing using the N.A.C.A. Clark-Y airfoil profile.Preprin

Estimation of wall shear stress using 4D flow cardiovascular MRI and computational fluid dynamics

Electronic version of an article published as Journal of mechanics in medicine and biology, 0, 1750046 (2016), 16 pages. DOI:10.1142/S0219519417500464 © World Scientific Publishing CompanyIn the last few years, wall shear stress (WSS) has arisen as a new diagnostic indicator in patients with arterial disease. There is a substantial evidence that the WSS plays a significant role, together with hemodynamic indicators, in initiation and progression of the vascular diseases. Estimation of WSS values, therefore, may be of clinical significance and the methods employed for its measurement are crucial for clinical community. Recently, four-dimensional (4D) flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) has been widely used in a number of applications for visualization and quantification of blood flow, and although the sensitivity to blood flow measurement has increased, it is not yet able to provide an accurate three-dimensional (3D) WSS distribution. The aim of this work is to evaluate the aortic blood flow features and the associated WSS by the combination of 4D flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance (4D CMR) and computational fluid dynamics technique. In particular, in this work, we used the 4D CMR to obtain the spatial domain and the boundary conditions needed to estimate the WSS within the entire thoracic aorta using computational fluid dynamics. Similar WSS distributions were found for cases simulated. A sensitivity analysis was done to check the accuracy of the method. 4D CMR begins to be a reliable tool to estimate the WSS within the entire thoracic aorta using computational fluid dynamics. The combination of both techniques may provide the ideal tool to help tackle these and other problems related to wall shear estimation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Experimental study on the impulsion port of a trochoidal wheeled pump

© 2017. This version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/All positive displacement pumps produce a pulsating flow. The present paper reports the experimental measurement of steady flow pulsations in the outlet of the internal wheeled pump. In the measured flow, the manufacturing tolerance are responsible of part of the spectra of the whole pulsation. Time-Resolved Particle Image Velocimetry technique has been used for this purpose. The flow pulsation measurement from a direct visualization of the velocity profile was carried out. The flow rate signal is derived from ad-hoc integration algorithm of the radial velocity profile, where the area discretization is a constant parameter that is relevant to minimize PIV errors by velocity gradients regions near the wall. Spectrographic analysis on the experimental data reveled low frequency components related with manufacturing tolerances. Measurements of this non-invasive procedure are compared with detailed CFD numerical results obtained from an improved gerotor model where manufacturing tolerances have been included. To be compared, cross-power spectral density analysis has been applied. The results reported in the paper show a method to provide a fast non-invasive flow pulsation measurement not only for pumps but also could be extended to compare aging effects of other kind of fluid power devices.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Multi-factor design for a vacuum ejector improvement by in-depth analysis of construction parameters

A vacuum supersonic ejector is an indispensable pneumatic device placed in nearly all industrial production lines. This device, also called a zero-secondary flow ejector, is characterized by the maximum entrained flow and the minimum secondary pressure. Numerical simulations were carried out by means of the CFD toolbox OpenFOAM v8 and its solver HiSA, which uses the AUSM+up upwind scheme. A single-factor analysis of eight parameters was performed to find how the ejector’s performance was enhanced or decreased, while other parameters were fixed. Four parameters were subject to further analysis to find the geometry that improves the standalone performance of the ejector. The mixing chamber length is the parameter that most improves its performance; alone it leads to a 10% improvement. A multi-factor analysis, based on a fractional factorial design, is carried out with the four relevant parameters. Results indicate that the multi-factor analysis enhances the performance of the ejector by 10.4% and the mixing chamber length is the factor that most influences the improvement. Although a multi-factor design improves the performance, no significant relevance has been detected with respect to the mixing chamber length improvement alone. The improved performance of this device leads to a reduction in operating time and, as a consequence, results in significant energy savings.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

CFD Studies of the convective heat transfer coefficients and pressure drops in geometries applied to water cooling channels of the crotch absorbers of ALBA synchrotron light source

Currently, the storage ring vacuum chambers of ALBA are protected by 156 crotch absorbers made of copper and Glidcop. After more than 10 years of operation as a thirdgeneration light source, the ALBA II project arose, aiming to transform this infrastructure into a fourth-generation synchrotron. This introduces new challenges in terms of the thermal and mechanical design of the future absorbers. The absorbers’ cooling channels consist of a set of 8-mmdiameter holes parallel to each other and drilled in the body of the absorbers. In each hole, there is a 6x1 mm stainless steel concentric inner tube coiled in spiral wires, whose aim is to enhance the heat transfer. The convective heat transfer coefficients used for the original design of the absorbers come from experimental correlations from the literature, and are applied as a global value for the whole system. In this work, Heat Transfer-Computational Fluid Dynamics (HT-CFD) studies of the convective heat transfer coefficients and pressure gradients in three different cooling channel geometries are carried out, aiming at leading the way of designing the cooling systems toward the CFD simulations rather than applying global experimental values. This information will be useful for the sizing of the new absorbers for the ALBA II projectPostprint (published version

Graphic method to evaluate power requirements of a hydraulic system using load-holding valves

It is very well known that the use of a load-holding valve (LHV) in a hydraulic system introduces additional energy consumption. This article presented a simplified graphical method for analyzing the power requirements of hydraulic systems equipped with load-holding valves for overrunning load control. The method helps to understand the performance of load-holding valves during actuator movement. In addition, it allows visualization of the influence on the overall system consumption of the main parameters (pilot ratio, set pressure) and others such as flow rate, back pressure, and load force. The method is attractive because, with only the pressures at the three ports and the valve relief function curve, it is sufficient to evaluate the energy consumption and to define the power ratio as an index indicating the percentage of energy that is to be used to open the LHV valve. The method was applied to real cases, in particular to two types of lifting mobile machines. It Citation: Berne, L.J.; Raush, G.; Roquet, P.; Gamez-Montero, P.-J.; Codina, E. Graphic Method to Evaluate Power Requirements of a Hydraulic System Using Load-Holding Valves. Energies 2022, 15, 4558. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/en15134558 Academic Editors: Paolo Casoli and Massimo Rundo Received: 10 May 2022 Accepted: 16 June 2022 Published: 22 June 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). was validated following several outdoor tests on two mobile machines where experimental data were obtained. During tests, both machines were equipped with a set of seven different performance LHV valves. The described method could be beneficial for hydraulic machine manufacturers engaged in designing lifting devices when selecting a suitable valve for energy efficiency applications, especially nowthat the trend towards electrification is a realityPostprint (published version

A simplified methodology to evaluate the design specifications of hydraulic components

The fatigue of a hydraulic component inherently varies due to various factors that can be divided into two categories: structural and load spectrum variability. The effects of both variabilities must be considered when determining fatigue life. Compared with the structural variability, determining the variability in the load spectrums is more difficult because the service conditions are complicated and the measurements of the load parameters are slow and expensive. The problem that arises when studying the fatigue behaviour of such components is the transferability of short data samples from real-life load histories, which are application-dependant, to laboratory test methods. Derived from the experimental background and know-how of the authors, this paper proposes a methodology that allows the definition and establishment of the hydraulic cylinder design specificactions, while taking into account the probabilistic characterisation of the load spectrum variability. This methodology could be extrapolated to other hydraulic or mechanical components.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Energy key performance indicators for mobile machinery

Mobile machinery manufacturers must face and deal with reducing fuel consumption, rising prices, and environmental pollution. The development of methods to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the energy performance of hydraulically actuated systems has become a priority for researchers and OEMs, Original Equipment Manufacturers. In this paper, a new methodology that is based on Key Performance Indicators, KPI, is proposed with different goals: (i) to evaluate the energy performance and the monitoring of its evolution in the different stages of its life cycle (design, commissioning, optimization, retrofit, etc.); (ii) compare the energy levels between machines of different sizes and different brands in a benchmarking process; and (iii) establish a database that is state of the art, which facilitates setting achievable goals or limits for improvement. These KPI values can be deduced simply from the energy balances that were made from the experimental study of various machines over a relatively long period. This methodology has been applied to typical hydraulic systems for lifting and lowering loads that are used in a wide variety of mobile machines of different mechanical designs and sizes. Still, it can be included in the generic name of “loaders”. A KPI’s values for the three machines are presented in a dashboard as a decision-making toolThis research received external funding. Data of the front loader originated in the prototype that was built up by BMH during the research activities in the framework of PROHIPP project, partially financed by EU (2004–2008), and LEVANTE project, partially financed by IBEROEKA program (2002–2005)Postprint (published version