Sharif Digital Repository

Cavitation phenomenon is defined as the process of rupturing any liquid by a decrease in pressure at nearly constant temperature. The cavities driven by the flow in a region of high pressure will implode and generate high pressure pulses leading eventually to erosion and vibration. But in supercavitation the bubbles produced by cavitation combine to form a large, stable bubble region around the supercavitating object. This phenomenon decreases the drag on the supercavitating body. Experimental testsware performed at 2-D unsteady flow for two wedge shaped bodies made before in laboratory and cavitation inception and its development were captured by a high speed camera. Then this cavitation... 

An API standard drilling fluid was investigated from laminar to turbulent flow conditions using an in-house-built viscometer at speeds from 200 to 1600 RPM. A power-based method was applied to obtain the apparent viscosity and the shear stress of the water-based drilling mud (WBM) in the annulus of the viscometer. Then, a MATLAB optimization program was developed to obtain model parameters for five rheology models integrated in a generalized Herschel-Bulkley-Extended (HBE) model and two widely used 4-parameter models in drilling industry. It is found that the Bingham, Cross, and HBE rheology models have precisely matched the WBM measurements in the viscometer. A generalized Reynolds number... 

Understanding the fresh groundwater lens (FGL) behavior and potential threat of climatic-induced seawater intrusion (SWI) are significant for the future water resources management of many small islands. In this paper, the FGL of Kish Island, an arid-region case in the Persian Gulf, Iran, is modeled using two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) simulations. These simulations are based on the application of SUTRA, a density-dependent groundwater numerical model. Also, the numerical model parameters are calibrated using PEST, an automated parameter estimation code. Firstly a detailed conceptualization of the FGL model is completed to understand the sensitivity of the FGL to some... 

In the past few decades, numerical simulation of multiphase flow systems has received increasing attention because of its importance in various fields of science and engineering. In this paper, a three-dimensional numerical model is developed for the analysis of simultaneous flow of two fluids through porous media. The numerical approach is fairly new based on the element-free Galerkin (EFG) method. The EFG is a type of mesh-less method which has rarely been used in the field of flow in porous media. The weak forms of the governing partial differential equations are derived by applying the weighted residual method and Galerkin technique. The penalty method is utilized for imposition of the... 

Separation of the effects of initial horizontal stress and relative density on cone tip resistance in sandy soils has been a complicated issue for many years. In order to overcome this problem, a numerical modeling of CPT which has been verified by calibration chamber tests, has been used in this paper to achieve a reliable analytical solution. The analytical solution has resulted in two relationships for sleeve friction and cone tip resistance in terms of the initial conditions of sandy soil. Based on the presented solution, the initial horizontal stress and relative density can be determined according to CPT measurements. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd  

The paper presents a numerical finite difference model of self-boring pressuremeter test (SBPM) using FLAC software. Different cavity expansion theories in sand have been compared to the results of numerical analyses carried out in this study. Limit pressure is believed to be used as a key parameter for the estimation of soil parameters from pressuremeter tests. In practice, SBPM tests are conducted up to 10–15% cavity strains, and the strain level associated with the limit pressure state is not reached. Therefore, determination of limit pressure usually needs extrapolation. In this paper, the authors suggest to use cavity pressure at 10% strain (P10) for the interpretation of in situ... 

Monitoring embankment dams is of crucial importance. In earth dams, the pore pressures, earth pressures, and displacements occurring during construction and function are measured at the time of the first impounding and exploitation by installing essential instruments, and so the dam's performance is evaluated and analyzed. Scope of the present research is the evaluation of Siah-Sang Dam performance through the results of instruments and back analysis, conducted by FLAC software. The Mohr-Coulomb elasticplastic model has been considered as the behavioral model of the dam, and the effect of the upstream shell's materials deformation has been modeled at the time of the initial impounding.... 

There are many equations available in the literature using the results of CPT (cone penetration test) and SPT (standard penetration test) measurements to predict the end bearing capacity of drilled shafts in sand. However, there are few equations that use soil parameters, such as friction angle and elastic modulus, as input values. Also, these available equations usually overestimate the end bearing capacity, and at times show conflicting results with respect to the parameters they use. This paper describes a numerical procedure to overcome the above shortcomings. The results obtained in this study were compared with both experimental and numerical results available in the literature. A... 

There are many equations available in the literature using the results of CPT (cone penetration test) and SPT (standard penetration test) measurements to predict the end bearing capacity of drilled shafts in sand. However, there are few equations that use soil parameters, such as friction angle and elastic modulus, as input values. Also, these available equations usually overestimate the end bearing capacity, and at times show conflicting results with respect to the parameters they use. This paper describes a numerical procedure to overcome the above shortcomings. The results obtained in this study were compared with both experimental and numerical results available in the literature. A... 

Oxy-fuel combustion is a modern carbon capture and storage (CCS) technique that improves the combustion process and reduces the environmental penalty of many combustion systems. Evidently, the accurate radiative calculation of oxy-fuel combustion is very important to obtain more improved combustion system designs with less environmental drawbacks. In the present study, a small scale unconfined turbulent bluff-body flame is numerically simulated to calculate the gas radiative properties using three different approaches of ignoring radiation, applying a modified version of the weighted sum of gray gases (WSGG) model, and employing the spectral line based weighted sum of gray gases (SLW) model.... 

Horizontal ground heat exchangers (GHEs) have a lower cost in comparison to vertical ones; however, they require more land area. For the sake of reducing the required land area for horizontal GHEs, flat-panel GHEs have been recently introduced. In this piece of research, a 3-D numerical model has been developed to predict the thermal performance of flat-panel GHEs. In this study, at first, the thermal performance of a flat-panel GHE has been compared with that of linear horizontal ones. The results demonstrate that the flat-panel GHE has a better thermal performance of about 27% in comparison to an arrangement of linear GHEs with a value of 0.5 m for pipe spacing. In the second part of this... 

In this work, a three-dimensional numerical model is developed to investigate the performance of a photovoltaic thermal system integrated with a thermoelectric generator module (PVT/TE). Furthermore, the effects of various operating parameters such as solar radiation, coolant mass flow rate, and inlet and ambient temperatures on the performance of both the PVT and PVT/TE systems are investigated and compared. Based on the obtained results, the electrical efficiency of the PVT/TE system, when exposed to solar radiation of 600 and 1000 W/m2, is 6.23% and 10.41% higher than that of the PVT system, respectively. Besides, the electrical efficiency of the PVT and PVT/TE by increasing the inlet... 

The soil permeability coefficient plays a key role in the process of numerical simulation of the liquefaction phenomenon. Liquefaction causes a considerable increase in soil permeability, due to the creation of easier paths for water flow. The work presented in this paper tries to investigate the effects of permeability coefficient on the results of numerical modeling of the liquefaction phenomenon. To do this, a fully coupled (u-P) formulation is employed to analyze soil displacements and pore water pressures. Two different versions of a well-calibrated critical state bounding surface plasticity model, which possesses the capability to utilize a single set of material parameters for a wide... 

This study presents a parallel evolutionary optimization approach to determine optimal management strategies of large-scale coastal groundwater problems. The population loops of evolutionary algorithms (EA) are parallelized using shared memory parallelism to address the high computational demands of such applications. This methodology is applied to solve the management problems in an aquifer system in Kish Island, Iran using a three-dimensional density-dependent groundwater numerical model. EAs of continuous ant colony optimization (CACO), particle swarm optimization, and genetic algorithm are utilized to solve the optimization problems. By implementing the parallelization strategy, a... 

Horizontal Ground Heat Exchangers (HGHE) as a means of exploiting geothermal energy has come to the fore for a few decades. Various analytical and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods have been proposed to predict the performance of the HGHEs. The available analytical approaches are fast; however, they are based on various simplifications and assumptions, affecting their accuracy. On the other hand, CFD methods are more accurate, but their computational cost is a burden. Therefore there is an acute need for an accurate and fast method for predicting the long-term performance of HGHEs. To this aim, this study puts forward a novel hybrid analytical-numerical model for predicting the...