The research is aimed at comparing residential building windows’ thermal performance with and without thermal shutters, and at examining thermal shutters’ performance upon being insulated with various types of insulation, glares, outside temperatures, and solar radiation. As an example, one case study based out of the UAE is chosen, covering the status of the housing typology and traits of building energy consumption. The study uses the primary tool of computer simulation software “DesignBuilder” to examine the impact of window shutters design on energy consumption and environmental impact. It was found that the usage of conventional insulating materials within the shutters is sufficient for the house to attain a reduction in heat gain of up to 50%. Furthermore, the application of the rolling shutters with analyzed control strategies recorded a potential reduction in equivalent CO2 emissions level, up to 15%, which would decrease the environmental burden on a national level. The simula... [more]

At present, the treatment of landfill leachate is an unavoidable challenge facing environmental problems. Incineration is one of the effective methods to treat landfill leachate which meets the 3T+E principle and can avoid the production of dioxin in the process of treatment. Based on the 3T+E principle, this paper studied the influence of burner arrangement on the treatment of landfill leachate through the numerical simulation method. The research showed that the symmetrical arrangement of reverse swirl and same direction flow were more conducive to the combustion of landfill leachate concentrations in the incinerator so that the residence time of the flue gas in the second combustion chamber can also exceed 2 s. When the nozzle arrangement height is 0.9 m−0.8 m, the wall collision rate of concentrated liquid droplets can be reduced, and the burnout rate of landfill leachate was the highest, reaching more than 92%.

The importance of simulation calculations in developing railway vehicles and their subsystems is consistently growing compared to physical experiments and track tests [...]

The structure of premixed turbulent flames and governing physical mechanisms of the influence of turbulence on premixed burning are often discussed by invoking combustion regime diagrams. In the majority of such diagrams, boundaries of three combustion regimes associated with (i) flame preheat zones broadened locally by turbulent eddies, (ii) reaction zones broadened locally by turbulent eddies, and (iii) local extinction are based on a Karlovitz number Ka, with differently defined Ka being used to demarcate different combustion regimes. The present paper aims to overview different definitions of Ka, comparing them, and suggesting the most appropriate choice of Ka for each combustion regime boundary. Moreover, since certain Karlovitz numbers involve a laminar flame thickness, the influence of complex combustion chemistry on the thickness and, hence, on various Ka and relations between them is explored based on results of complex-chemistry simulations of unperturbed (stationary, planar,... [more]

In general, studies on short-term hourly electricity load modeling and forecasting do not investigate in detail the sources of uncertainty in forecasting. This study aims to evaluate the impact and benefits of applying bootstrap aggregation in overcoming the uncertainty in time series forecasting, thereby increasing the accuracy of multistep ahead point forecasts. We implemented the existing and proposed clustering-based bootstrapping methods to generate new electricity load time series. In the proposed method, we use singular spectrum analysis to decompose the series between signal and noise to reduce the variance of the bootstrapped series. The noise is then bootstrapped by K-means clustering-based generation of Gaussian normal distribution (KM.N) before adding it back to the signal, resulting in the bootstrapped series. We apply the benchmark models for electricity load forecasting, SARIMA, NNAR, TBATS, and DSHW, to model all new bootstrapped series and determine the multistep ahead... [more]

This paper presents the results of a numerical analysis of the impact of rock mass geomechanical parameters on the stability of preparatory headings located within the Legnica-Glogow Copper District. The paper shows the results of numerical calculations prepared for headings driven in two rock mass types with different strength and deformation parameters, which allow illustrating their influence on the safety of mining performed in underground copper ore mines. Numerical modeling was performed using the Examine2D 7.0 software, in the plane strain state. Numerical simulations were performed for an isotropic and for a homogenous medium. The rock medium was described with an elastic model. The parameters of the rock mass for numerical modeling were calculated using the Hoek−Brown classification. The Coulomb−Mohr strength criterion was adopted as a measure for assessing the rock mass effort. Numerical simulations confirmed the dependance between the stability of the analyzed excavations an... [more]

An advanced break or a vast region of pressurisation may occur when the working face passes through an abandoned roadway, resulting in a roof falling or water inrush. The stress evolution of the working face passing through an abandoned roadway in a coal mine was comprehensively discussed using theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and field monitoring. In this study, the calculated critical width of the abandoned roadway where the main roof was bound to an advanced break was 5.4 m. Reducing the suspended length of the main roof is beneficial to the stability of the working face’s passage across the abandoned roadway. The maximum abutment stress on the roof occurred at the working face through a semi-abandoned roadway, reaching 44.3 MPa. Subsequently, it decreased sharply until the working face completely passed and returned to the normal level. The damage depths of the floor strata from the field monitoring were 15 and 20 m, which showed that the use of hydraulic fracturing tech... [more]

After hydraulic fracturing, some treatments intended for production enhancement fail to yield predetermined effects. The main reason is the insufficient research about the fracture propagation mechanism. There is compelling evidence that I-shaped fracture, two horizontal fractures at the junction of coalbed and cover/bottom layer, and one vertical fracture in the coalbed have formed in part of the coalbed after hydraulic fracturing. Therefore, this paper aims at I-shaped fracture propagation simulation. A novel propagation model is derived on the basis of a three-dimensional (3D) model, and the coupling conditions of vertical fracture and horizontal fractures are established based on the flow rate distribution and the bottom-hole pressure equality, respectively. Moreover, an associated PDA (pressure decline analysis of post-fracturing) model is established. Both models complement with each other and work together to guide fracturing treatment. Finally, a field case is studied to show t... [more]

Nuclear energy has played and will continue playing a key role in the fight against climate change due to its extremely low green-house gas emissions, and high energy density and reliability [...]

A giant, ultra-deep (>7000 m) strike-slip fault-related oilfield has been found in the central depression of the Tarim Basin. However, little research has addressed this discovery to understand the fault effects on the oil migration, which constrains the oil exploitation deployment and well optimization. Based on fault modeling and fluid analysis, we present the effects of fault segment on the oil segmentation and migration in the ultra-deep Fuman Oilfield. The results show a distinct fault segmentation and also subsequent variable fault architecture and non-connected fracture network other than a through-going fault zone. There are fault segment-related isolated fractured reservoirs and fluid variation along the fault strike, which indicates that a large oilfield comprises a series of unconnected small oil reservoirs along the fault segments. The fluid segmentation and molecular indicator of dibenzothiophenes reveal that there is a variable petroleum lateral migration along the strike... [more]

The maritime silk road policy of China brings opportunities to companies relating to overseas investment. Despite the investment potentials, the risks cannot be ignored and have still not been well assessed. Considering the fact that ICRG comprehensive risk has certain subjectivity, it is not completely applicable to China’s overseas investment. Therefore, based on the data of the China Statistical Yearbook and International Statistical Yearbook, a new indictor is adopted to better capture the Chinese investment risk and to make our prediction more objective. In order to acquire the ability to predict the investment risk in the future which is essential to stakeholders, machine learning techniques are applied by training the ICRG data of the previous year and Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) data of the next year together. Finally, a relative reliable link has been built between the OFDI indicator in the next year and the left ICRG indicators in the last year with both the best... [more]

Well construction operations require continuous complex decision-making and multi-step action planning. Action selection at every step demands a careful evaluation of the vast action space, while guided by long-term objectives and desired outcomes. Current human-centric decision-making introduces a degree of bias, which can result in reactive rather than proactive decisions. This can lead from minor operational inefficiencies all the way to catastrophic health and safety issues. This paper details the steps in structuring unbiased purpose-built sequential decision-making systems. Setting up such systems entails representing the operation as a Markov decision process (MDP). This requires explicitly defining states and action values, defining goal states, building a digital twin to model the process, and appropriately shaping reward functions to measure feedback. The digital twin, in conjunction with the reward function, is utilized for simulating and quantifying the different action seq... [more]

Over the last decades, nanomechanical sensors have received significant attention from the scientific community, as they find plenty of applications in many different research fields, ranging from fundamental physics to clinical diagnosis. Regarding biological applications, nanomechanical sensors have been used for characterizing biological entities, for detecting their presence, and for characterizing the forces and motion associated with fundamental biological processes, among many others. Thanks to the continuous advancement of micro- and nano-fabrication techniques, nanomechanical sensors have rapidly evolved towards more sensitive devices. At the same time, researchers have extensively worked on the development of theoretical models that enable one to access more, and more precise, information about the biological entities and/or biological processes of interest. This paper reviews the main theoretical models applied in this field. We first focus on the static mode, and then conti... [more]

Forty years after the discovery of metallocene catalysts, there are still several aspects that remain unresolved, especially when the “conventional” alkylaluminum activators are not used. Herein, we systematically investigated the synthesis of polyethylene (PE) via three different zirconocene catalysts, with different alkyl substituents, activated via different organoboron compounds. The polymerization behavior, as well as the properties of the materials, were evaluated. The results demonstrate that the highest catalytic activity is shown by bis(cyclopentadienyl)dimethylzirconium activated by trityl tetra(pentafluorophenyl)borate. Additionally, it was found that toluene is the optimum solvent for these systems and at these reaction conditions. Moreover, to validate our experimental results, a comprehensive mathematical model was developed on the basis of thermodynamic and kinetic principles. The concentration of ethylene transferred to the solvent phase (toluene) in a liquid−vapor equi... [more]

This study aimed to analyze pharyngeal airflow characteristics and their relationship with the skeletal movement of the maxilla and mandible after bimaxillary orthognathic surgery in patients with skeletal class III (mandibular prognathism) malocclusion. Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) was conducted before surgery (T0), immediately after surgery (T1), and at least six months after surgery (T2). Digital imaging and communications in medicine files were transferred to InVivo (Anatomage) software to measure the skeletal changes after surgery. The changes in the maxillary and mandibular position, tongue position, and hyoid bone position were analyzed. Patient-specific models were reconstructed using 3D-Doctor software. The models after converting to the stereolithography (STL) file for Ansys integrated computer engineering and manufacturing code for computational fluid dynamics (ICEM CFD), commercial software were used for calculating the geometry, pressure drop and adjusted pressure... [more]

After the occurrence of a hydrogen fluoride leakage accident that triggered massive losses in Gumi, South Korea in 2012, the government and companies have been interested in installing mitigation systems to minimize the loss of a leakage accident. What lacks in previous researches studying mitigation systems is an evaluation of how much a mitigation system can reduce the impact of accidents. Therefore, modeling-based simulations of mitigation systems should be urgently developed to analysis of the performance of a mitigation system. This study aims to design a mitigation system to reduce the amount of materials leaked to the outside when a leakage accident of a storage tank occurs and determine its design specifications through the use of modeling. The basic concept is that when leakage occurs, leakage material in a dike is drained to a remote impoundment installed under the ground, while the material in the storage vessel is transferred to a reserve tank by a pump at the same time. To... [more]

Coalescence-induced droplet jumping has received more attention recently, because of its potential applications in condensation heat transfer enhancement, anti-icing and self-cleaning, etc. In this paper, the molecular dynamics simulation method is applied to study the coalescence-induced jumping of two nanodroplets with equal size on the surfaces of periodic strip-like wettability patterns. The results show that the strip width, contact angle and relative position of the center of two droplets are all related to the jumping velocity, and the jumping velocity on the mixed-wettability superhydrophobic surfaces can exceed the one on the perfect surface with a 180° contact angle on appropriately designed surfaces. Moreover, the larger both the strip width and the difference of wettability are, the higher the jumping velocity is, and when the width of the hydrophilic strip is fixed, the jumping velocity becomes larger with the increase of the width of the hydrophobic strip, which is contra... [more]

Heterogeneous chemical looping combustion (CLC) reactions and conjugate transports in large oxygen carrier particles were numerically investigated with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approaches, in which a simplified noncatalytic reaction model was implemented for reducing intraparticle modelling computation. Volumic gas-solid reactions were treated as surface reactions based on the equivalent internal surface in the particle model. In large porous particles such as fixed bed CLC reactors, the heterogeneous reactions are often limited by intraparticle diffusion. Comprehensive analyses were conducted on transports across the particle surface and their influences on reactions inside the single particles. A threshold Reynolds number of external convections was found for the enhancement of intraparticle reactions. The heterogeneous reactions, intraparticle diffusions and interstitial transports in a fixed bed CLC reactor randomly packed with 597 spheres were thoroughly analysed with th... [more]

The separation of bubbles in a gas−liquid cyclone is complicated. A combination of numerical simulation and visual experimentation was considered apt to reveal the microscopic mechanisms of bubble flow. First of all, cyclones with different structures were numerically simulated. The calculation results show that the larger the diameter of the exhaust port, the better the bubble flow effect. When the exhaust port diameter was 24 mm, the gas discharge efficiency was 8% higher than that with an exhaust port diameter of 16 mm. The sequence of the bubble flow effect of a four-structure cyclone was obtained, and the gas discharge efficiency of the cyclone with a rectangular inlet was 7% higher than that of the trapezoidal inlet. Finally, a visual experimental platform was built to compare the rectangular inlet cyclone and spiral inlet cyclone with the best bubble flow effect. In accordance with the simulation numerical calculations, the bubble flow effect of the rectangular inlet cyclone was... [more]

We propose a mathematical model for phenol and p-cresol mixture degradation in a continuously stirred bioreactor. The model is described by three nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The novel idea in the model design is the biomass specific growth rate, known as sum kinetics with interaction parameters (SKIP) and involving inhibition effects. We determine the equilibrium points of the model and study their local asymptotic stability and bifurcations with respect to a practically important parameter. Existence and uniqueness of positive solutions are proved. Global stabilizability of the model dynamics towards equilibrium points is established. The dynamic behavior of the solutions is demonstrated on some numerical examples.

Population Balance Modeling (PBM) is a powerful modeling framework that allows the prediction of the dynamics of distributed properties of a population of individuals at the mesoscale [...]

Understanding the influence of gas flow maldistribution in honeycombs can be beneficial for the process design in various technical applications. Although recent studies have investigated the effect of maldistribution by comparing the results of numerical simulations with experimental measurements, an exhaustive 3D full-field comparison is still lacking. Such full-field comparisons are required to identify and eliminate possible limitations of numerical and experimental tools. For that purpose, spatially resolved flow patterns were simulated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and measured experimentally by non-invasive NMR velocimetry (MRV). While the latter might suffer from a misinterpretation of artefacts, the reliability of CFD is linked to correctly chosen boundary conditions. Here, a full-field numerical and experimental analysis of the gas flow within catalytic honeycombs is presented. The velocity field of thermally polarized methane gas was measured in a regular 3D-printed... [more]

Hydrogen-fueled fuel cells are considered one of the key strategies to tackle the achievement of fully-sustainable mobility. The transportation sector is paying significant attention to the development and industrialization of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) to be introduced alongside batteries, reaching the goal of complete de-carbonization. In this paper a multi-phase, multi-component, and non-isothermal 3D-CFD model is presented to simulate the fluid, heat, and charge transport processes developing inside a hydrogen/air PEMFC with a serpentine-type gas distributor. Model results are compared against experimental data in terms of polarization and power density curves, including an improved formulation of exchange current density at the cathode catalyst layer, improving the simulation results’ accuracy in the activation-dominated region. Then, 3D-CFD fields of reactants’ delivery to the active electrochemical surface, reaction rates, temperature distributions, and liquid w... [more]

In this study, hydrodynamic interactions between passing and moored ships were studied by applying a time-domain numerical simulation method. The boundary value problem for a fluid domain was formulated based on a potential flow theory. A numerical method was developed based on a finite element method with an efficient re-mesh algorithm. Regarding the free-surface boundary conditions, both double-body and free-surface models were considered for examining the free-surface effect on the hydrodynamic forces due to the passing ship. First, numerical results were validated by comparison with the model test results of Kriebel et al. (2005), where generic Series 60 hulls were considered as the target model for the passing and moored ships. In addition, hydrodynamic pressure fields and force time-series were investigated to understand the passing ship problem. Second, a series of numerical simulations were performed to study the effects of the passing ship speed, separation distance, water dep... [more]

Tip clearance has a great effect on the flow and pressure fluctuation characteristics in a multiphase pump, especially at multiple operating points. The phase distribution and pressure fluctuation in tip clearance in a multiphase pump are revealed using the CFD (computational fluid dynamics) technology and high-speed photography methods. In this paper, the phase distribution, the gas-liquid two-phase velocity slip, and the pressure fluctuation intensity are comprehensively analyzed. Results show with the increase of the tip clearance, the multiphase pump pressurization performance is obviously deteriorated. In the meantime, the gas accumulation mainly occurs at the hub, the blade suction side (SS), and the tip clearance, and the maximum gas-liquid two-phase velocity difference is near the impeller streamwise of 0.4. In addition, the tip clearance improves the gas-liquid two-phase distribution in the pump, that is, the larger the tip clearance is, the more uniform the gas-liquid distrib... [more]