A compact hybrid rocket motor design that incorporates a dual-vortical-flow (DVF) concept is proposed. The oxidizer (nitrous oxide, N2O) is injected circumferentially into various sections of the rocket motor, which are sectored by several solid fuel “rings” (made of hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene, HTPB) that are installed along the central axis of the motor. The proposed configuration not only increases the residence time of the oxidizer flow, it also implies an inherent “roll control” capability of the motor. Based on a DVF motor geometry with a designed thrust level of 11.6 kN, the characteristics of the turbulent reacting flow within the motor and its rocket performance were analyzed with a comprehensive numerical model that implements both real-fluid properties and finite-rate chemistry. Data indicate that the vacuum specific impulse (Isp) of the DVF motor could reach 278 s. The result from a preliminary ground test of a lab-scale DVF hybrid rocket motor (with a designed thrust level of 3,000 N) also shows promising performance. The proposed DVF concept is expected to partly resolve the issue of scalability, which remains challenging for hybrid rocket motors development.

In this investigation, we intend to present the influence of the prominent viscous dissipation and Soret effects on mixed convection heat and mass transfer over the vertical frustum of a cone in a nanofluid. The model used for the nanofluid incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. In addition, the uniform wall nanoparticle condition at the surface is replaced with the zero nanoparticle mass flux condition to execute physically applicable results. The governing equations of a nanofluid flow in the dimensional form are reduced to a system of partial differential equations in the non-dimensional form by using suitable non-similarity variables and then solved by using a recently introduced spectral method named as Bivariate Pseudo-Spectral Local Linearisation Method (BPSLLM). The convergence and error analysis tests are conducted to examine the accuracy of the spectral method. To validate the method, the present numerical results are compared with the existing results in some special cases and the outcomes are observed to be in very good agreement. The effects of Brownian motion, thermophoresis, Eckert number, Soret number, nanoparticle and regular buoyancy parameters on the dimensionless surface drag, heat, nanoparticle mass and regular mass transfer rates over the vertical frustum of a cone are discussed and illustrated graphically.

The present study is devoted to electromagnetohydrodynamic (EMHD) flow and heat transfer characteristics of nanofluid inside a parallel plate microchannel. The nanofluid is actuated by Lorentz force which is originated from the interaction of applied electrical field and perpendicular magnetic field. A fully developed assumption with uniform flux at the surface is considered in the analysis, and the influences of viscous dissipation as well as Joule heating are also taken into account. The analytical solutions for velocity and temperature are derived. Moreover, the Nusselt number variations are examined. The results show that the Hartmann number, the dimensionless parameter S and the nanoparticls volume fraction have significant influences on flow and temperature of nanofluid. As Hartmann number increasing, the Nusselt number improves and similar trend can be observed with the augment of nanoparticls volume fraction. A diminishment of heat transfer performance can be seen with increase of the Joule parameter and Brinkman number, while an enhancement in heat transfer can be witnessed with increase of nanoparticls volume fraction.

A T-shaped microfluidic micro-mixer was designed to mix desired concentrations of two fluid streams and to prepare their homogenous mixture solution. A hydrostatic pressure gradient was induced in one of the branches of the system (mixing channel) by applying external electric field and generating electroosmotic flow in the two other branches of the system. The flow field and transferred mass into the mixing channel can be regulated by controlling the applied voltage of the system. In order to prepare more homogenous mixture solution, some obstacles were added to the mixing channel to induce perturbation in the flow field and enhance the mixing efficiency of the system. Numerical simulations were performed to show the correctness of the proposed mixing strategy and to investigate the influences of the applied voltage on the mixing efficiency and induced pressure flow in the mixing channel. A proposed design can be used as a guideline to control and enhance mixing efficiency, and consequently functionality, of different microfluidic devices.

Louvered cavities are extensively employed in engineering applications. In the configurations of flow past these cavities, self-sustained oscillations will be excited. This can give rise to structure vibrations or noise. Numerical models are established to analyze excitation condition for of these oscillations. Computational results reveal that the excitation condition can be quantitatively described by the ratio of gap width G to the boundary layer thickness δ at the separation edge. When G/δ exceeds a certain critical value G/δc, self-sustained oscillations are excited. Otherwise, disturbances will dissipate and the flow configuration along the louver will be like a parallel plate flow. The critical value G/δc decreases with the ratio of G to the thickness of the louver plate H. This suggests that the excitation condition is more easily satisfied for a louver with sparse fins. The bottom boundary of the cavity restricts the feedback flow and then suppresses the excitation of self-sustained oscillations. With an increasing cavity height Hc, which reflects the distance between the louver and the bottom boundary, the critical value G/δc decreases and the decreasing rate reduces gradually. In contrast, because G/δc is relatively insensitive to the cavity length Lc, the side boundaries have no obvious influence on the excitation condition.

The simulations of flow past a two-dimensional circular cylinder are conducted to investigate the feasibility of adaptive mesh refinement applied on curved spectral elements. The nonconforming spectral element method and adaptive meshes technique are used to the curve surfaces and observe whether any discontinuity of the solutions. The adaptive nonconforming spectral element method is implemented to compare with those obtained by conforming mesh method with respect to several existing numerical and experimental studies. Meanwhile, three kinds of estimated error base mesh adaptation are conducted to compare their accuracy and efficiency with conforming mesh method. The results show adaptive nonconforming mesh method is more efficient than the conforming method. Especially, the vorticity error based method performs highest accuracy and fastest convergence. The results show this mesh refinement technique is applicable on the curved elements with satisfactory accuracy. It releases this technique may be applied on the simulations of flow past objects with more general geometries.

This study examines how to stop the pyrolysis of fir needles, birch leaves, aspen twigs and their mixture using the minimum volumes of water. The combustion of forest fuels is suppressed by spraying water on their surface. The temperature of thermal decomposition is monitored throughout the layer of forest fuel by thermocouples. A high-speed camera and optical techniques allow us to study water spraying and its interaction with forest fuels. Finally, the study specifies the ranges of the minimum water volumes and the times of ending of the thermal decomposition of forest fuels. When analyzing the energy balance in the thermally decomposing forest fuel, a mathematical expression is formulated to predict the water volume sufficient to suppress thermal decomposition of forest fuel. This expression takes into account the ratio between the heat energy spent on water evaporation in pores of forest fuel and the heat energy of the reacting layer of forest fuel. The obtained dimensionless factor considers the main parameters of water spraying and the properties of forest fuel. This factor enables us to apply the research findings to forest fuel in various regions of the world.

In the propagation of seismic waves through layered media, the boundaries play crucial role. The boundaries separating the different layers of the earth are irregular in nature and not perfectly plane. It is, therefore, necessary to take into account the corrugation of the boundaries while dealing with the problem of reflection and refraction of seismic waves. The present study explores the reflection and refraction phenomena of SH-waves at a corrugated interface between visco-elastic half-space and fibre-reinforced half-space. Method of approximation given by Rayleigh is adopted and the expressions for reflection and transmission coefficients are obtained in closed form for the first and second order approximation of the corrugation. The closed form formulae of these coefficients are presented for a corrugated interface of periodic shape (cosine law interface). It is found that these coefficients depend upon the amplitude of corrugation of the boundary, angle of incidence and frequency of the incident wave. Numerical computations for a particular type of corrugated interface are performed and a number of graphs are plotted. Some special cases are derived.

Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is adopted to compute two and three-dimensional lid driven cavity flows to examine the influence of memory management on the computational performance using Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Both single and multi-relaxation time LBM are adopted. The computations are conducted on nVIDIA GeForce Titan, Tesla C2050 and GeForce GTX 560Ti. The performance using global memory deteriorates greatly when multi relaxation time (MRT) LBM is used, which is due to the scheme requesting more information from the global memory than its single relaxation time (SRT) LBM counterpart. On the other hand, adopting on chip memory the difference using MRT and SRT is not significant. Also, performance of LBM streaming procedure using offset reading surpasses offset writing ranging from 50% to 100% and this applies to both SRT and MRT LBM. Finally, comparisons using different GPU platforms indicate that Titan as expected outperforms other devices, and attains 227 and 193 speedup over its Intel Core i7-990 CPU counterpart and four times faster than GTX 560Ti and Tesla C2050 for three dimensional cavity flow simulations respectively with single and double precisions.

This paper investigates the rupture problem of a thin micropolar liquid film under a magnetic field on a horizontal plate, using long-wave perturbation to resolve nonlinear evolution equations with a free film interface. The governing equation is resolved using a finite difference method as part of an initial value problem for spatial periodic boundary conditions. The effect of a micropolar liquid under a magnetic field on the nonlinear rupture mechanism is studied in terms of the micropolar parameter, R, the Hartmann constant, m and the initial disturbance amplitude, H0. Modeling results indicate that the R, m and H0 parameters strongly affect the film flow. Enhancing the micropolar and magnetic effects is found to delay the rupture time. In addition, the results show that the film rupture time increases as the values of initial disturbance magnitude decrease. The micropolar and magnetic parameters indeed play a significant role in the film flow on a horizontal plate. Moreover, the optimum conditions can be found to alter stability of the film flow by controlling the applied magnetic field.

This paper focuses on the attitude dynamics and control of liquid filled spacecraft, and the large amplitude fuel slosh dynamics is included by using an improved moving pulsating ball model. The moving pulsating ball model is an equivalent mechanical model that is capable of imitating the whole liquid reorientation process, specifically for the occurrence of large amplitude slosh. This model is improved by incorporating a static capillary force and an effective mass factor. The improvements on this model are validated with previously published experiment results. The spacecraft attitude maneuver is implemented by the momentum transfer technique, and the feedback control strategy is designed based on Lyapunov theory. The effects of liquid viscosity, tank location and desired steady time on sloshing torque and control torque are investigated. The attitude control strategy applied in this paper is proved to be applicable for the coupled liquid filled spacecraft system. The obtained conclusions are useful to aid in liquid filled spacecraft overall design.

The present study investigates the flow and heat transfer characteristics of blood carrying gold nanoparticles in a porous channel with moving/stationary walls in the presence of thermal radiation. Blood is considered as Newtonian fluid which is the base fluid and gold (Au) as nanoparticles. The governing equations are transformed into system of ordinary differential equations by using similarity transformations. The analytical solutions are obtained for the flow variables by employing homotopy analysis method (HAM). The analytical solutions are compared with the numerical solutions which are obtained by shooting technique along with Runge-Kutta scheme. It was noticed that there is a good agreement between analytical and numerical results. The influence of various parameters on velocity, temperature and heat transfer rate of gold-blood nanofluid has been discussed in detail. The temperature of the nanofluid increases with increasing the nanoparticle volume fraction. The heat transfer rate at the top wall increases with increasing nanoparticle volume fraction while it decreases for a given increase in radiation parameter.

Owing to robust and optimal specification, model predictive control method has received wide attentions over recent years. Since in certain operational conditions, an Atomic/scanning Force Microscope (AFM) shows chaos behavior, the chaos feedback control of the AFM system is considered. According to the nonlinear model of forces interacting between the tip of micro cantilever and the substrate of AFM; the nonlinear control methods are proposed. In the paper, the chaos control of a micro cantilever AFM based on the nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) technique is presented. Through software simulation results, the effectiveness of the designed NMPC of the AFM is assessed. The simulation results together with analytical stability proofs indicate that the proposed method is effective in keeping the system in a stable range.

Influences of the tip mass, excitation mode of Frequency Modulated Atomic Force Microscope (FM-AFM) on the resonance frequency shift in force modulation (FM) mode are studied. Governing equations of motion are determined based on Timoshenko beam model with concentrated end mass. Approach point and base amplitude are set such that the FM-AFM remains just in FM mode. Either the linearized and nonlinear Derjaguin-Muller-Toporov (DMT) model are investigated. Then frequency shifts are determined for various interaction force regimes. It is showed the effect of tip mass on frequency shift is significant even for small tips. Nonlinear model shows lower frequency shifts in comparison with linearized model. It is showed that the amplitude of response is increased by increasing the tip mass and order of base excitation. Deviation of frequency shift between linearized and nonlinear solution are studied. It is declared that the error between linearized and nonlinear model is complicated. A deviation index is used for explaining behavior of error while tip mass and excitation mode are changed. It is showed, this index predicts the trend of error in all excitation modes and force cases. Behavior of system is linearizing by increasing the order of excitation, generally.

This study investigated the effect of rarefaction on microchannel gas flow by measuring pressure profiles in microchannels with various aspect ratios. Pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) was applied in rectangular microchannels to obtain the global flow field by using detailed pressure data. The effect of rarefaction on the microchannel gas flow was clearly observed in the microchannels through the pressure data obtained using PSP measurements. A nonlinear pressure distribution was observed inside the microchannels, and this distribution decreased as the Knudsen number (Kn) increased because of the rarefaction effect. The dimensionless pressure deviation from the linear assumption dropped from 0.25 to 0 when the outlet Kn number increased to 0.066 in the 100-μm-wide microchannel, and the dimensionless location of the maximum deviation moved upstream because of the gaseous slip at the wall. The nonlinear pressure distribution also decreased in the 50-μm-wide microchannel as the outlet Kn number increased; however, the peak of the maximum deviation could no longer be identified because of the characteristic of the narrow channel.

In this note, Föppl-Hencky membrane equation in the case of axisymmetric deformation was derived, and its power series solution was presented by using the displacement-based solution method. The result shows that both the displacement-based solution method and the stress-based solution method are effective for the solution to Föppl-Hencky equation. But in comparison with the latter, the former makes the solving process some more concise. In addition, some issues concerned were also discussed.

A numerical investigation of an electroosmotic flow through a microchannel is presented. Lattice Poisson-Boltzmann method was utilized to determine the effective geometrical and electrokinetic parameters in a microfluidic system. The non-Newtonian fluid model is assumed to be viscoplastic which is suitable for modeling biologic structures. These types of fluids are shown to have a yield stress which affects the velocity profile significantly. Unlike Casson fluid constitutive properties, electrokinetic parameters are shown not to be effective on the yielded region in the microchannel. The influence of flow and viscokinetic parameters on yield height, plug-flow velocity and mass flow rate was studied and discussed.

Flexoelectricity, the coupling of strain gradient to polarization, enhances the properties of piezoelectric response desirable for advanced MEMS dramatically even in centrosymmetric dielectrics. In this paper, the general formulations of the flexoelectric couple stress theory presented by Hadjesfandiari in orthogonal curvilinear coordinate system are derived, and are then specified for the case of cylindrical coordinates. A size-dependent flexoelectric model of circular plate is established based on the current formulations in cylindrical coordinates. The governing equations, boundary conditions and initial conditions are derived by applying Hamilton's principle. The static bending and free vibration problems of a simply supported axisymmetric circular plate are carried out to illustrate the applicability of the present model. Numerical results reveal that a homogeneous electric field between the up and down surfaces of the circular plate is induced indeed. The generated deflection, induced voltage and natural frequency show obvious size effect, but the size effect is almost diminishing as the thickness of the plate is far greater than the material length scale parameter. As the increase of the flexoelectric coefficient, the induced voltage increases evidently and the generated deflection and the natural frequency increase weakly.