Computational Fluid Dynamics: A Practical Approach

Index

Introduction

1.1 WHAT IS COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

Computational fluid dynamics has certainly come of age in industrial applications and academia research. In the beginning this popular field of study was primarily limited to high-technology engineering areas of aeronautics and astronautics, but now it is a widely adopted methodology for solving complex problems in many modern engineering fields. CFD, derived from different disciplines of fluid mechanics and heat transfer, is also finding its way into other important uncharted areas especially in process, chemical, civil, and environmental engineering. Construction of new and better improved system designs and optimization carried out on existing equipments through computational simulations are resulting in enhanced efficiency and lower operating costs. With the concerns of global warming and increasing world population, engineers in power-generation industries are heavily relying on CFD to reduce development and retrofitting costs. These computational studies are currently being performed to address pertinent issues relating to technologies for clean and renewable power as well as meeting strict regulation challenges of emissions control and substantial reduction of environmental pollutants.

Nevertheless, the basic question remains: What actually is computational fluid dynamics? In retrospect, it has certainly become a new branch integrating not only the disciplines of fluid mechanics with mathematics but also with computer science as illustrated in Fig. 1.1. Let us briefly discuss each of these individual disciplines. Fluid mechanics is essentially the study of fluids either in motion (fluid in dynamic mode) or at rest (fluid in stationary mode). CFD is particularly dedicated to the former, fluids that are in motion, and how the fluid flow behavior influences processes that may include heat transfer and possibly chemical reactions in combusting flows. This directly infers to the fluid dynamics description appearing in the terminology. Additionally, the physical characteristics of the fluid motion can usually be described through fundamental mathematical equations, usually in partial differential form, which govern a process of interest and are often called governing equations in CFD (see Chapter 3 for more insights). In order to solve these mathematical equations, they are converted by computer scientists using high-level computer programming languages into computer programs or software packages. The computational part simply means the study of the fluid flow through numerical simulations, which involves employing computer programs or software packages performed on high-speed digital computers to attain the numerical solutions. Another question arises: Do we actually require the expertise of three specific people from each discipline—fluids engineering, mathematics, and computer science—to come together for the development of CFD programs or even to conduct CFD simulations? The answer is obviously no, and more likely it is expected that this field demands a person who will proficiently obtain some subsets of the knowledge from each discipline.

FIGURE 1.1 The different disciplines contained within computational fluid dynamics

CFD has also become one of the three basic methods or approaches that can be employed to solve problems in fluid dynamics and heat transfer. As demonstrated in Fig. 1.2, each approach is strongly interlinked and does not lie in isolation. Traditionally, both experimental and analytical methods have been used to study the various aspects of fluid dynamics and to assist engineers in the design of equipment and industrial processes involving fluid flow and heat transfer. With the advent of digital computers, the computational (numerical) aspect has emerged as another viable approach. Although the analytical method is still practiced by many and experiments will continue to be significantly performed, the trend is clearly toward greater reliance on the computational approach for industrial designs, particularly when the fluid flows are very complex.

FIGURE 1.2 The three basic approaches to solve problems in fluid dynamics and heat transfer

In the past, potential or novice users would probably learn CFD by investing a substantial amount of time writing their own computer programs. With the increasing demands from industries or even within academia to acquire the knowledge of CFD in a much shorter time frame, it is not surprising that the interest in abandoning writing computer programs is escalating in favor of using more commercially available software packages. Multipurpose CFD programs are gradually earning the approval, and with the advancement of models that better encapsulate the flow physics, these software packages are also gaining wide acceptance. There are numerous advantages in applying these computer programs. Since the mundane groundwork of writing and testing of these computer codes has been thoroughly carried out by the developers of respective software companies, today’s potential or novice CFD users are comforted by not having to deal with these types of issues. Such a program can be readily employed to solve numerous fluid-flow problems.

Despite the well-developed methodologies within the computational codes, CFD is certainly more than just being proficient in operating these software packages. Bearing this in mind, the primary focus of this book is thus oriented to better educate potential or novice users in employing CFD in a more judicious manner, equally supplementing the understanding of underlying basic concepts and the technical know-how in better tackling fluid-flow problems. Other users who are inclined to pursue a postgraduate research study, or are currently undergoing research through the development of new mathematical models to solve more complex flow problems, should consult other CFD books (e.g., Fletcher, 1991; Anderson, 1995; Versteeg and Malalasekera, 1995). We intend to concentrate on presenting a step-by-step procedure of initially understanding the physics of new fluid dynamics problems at hand, developing new mathematical models to represent the flow physics, and implementing appropriate numerical techniques or methods to test these models in a CFD program in the future.

CFD has indeed become a powerful tool to be employed either for pure or applied research or industrial applications. Computational simulations and analyses are increasingly performed in many fluid engineering applications that include airplanes (aerospace engineering), motor vehicles (automotive engineering), breathing and blood flow (biomedical engineering), fluid flowing through pumps and pipes (chemical engineering), rivers and pollutants (civil and environmental engineering), turbines and furnaces (power engineering), and swimming and golf (sports engineering). Through CFD, one can gain an increased knowledge of how system components are expected to perform, so as to make the required improvements for design and optimization studies. CFD actually asks the question: What if …? before a commitment is undertaken to execute any design alteration. When one ponders the planet we live in, almost everything revolves in one way or another around a fluid or moves within a fluid.

More recently, CFD is revolutionizing the teaching and learning of fluid mechanics and thermal science in higher education institutions through visualization of complex fluid flows. Development of some CFD-based educational software packages such as FlowLab by ANSYS® Inc., Fluent® has allowed students to visually reinforce the concepts of fluid flow and heat transfer through a Virtual Fluids Laboratory. This software also allows teachers to create their own examples or customize predefined existing ones. Using carefully constructed examples, students are introduced to the effective use of CFD for solving fluid-flow problems and can instinctively develop an intuitive feel for the flow physics. In the next section, we discuss some important advantages and further expound on how CFD has evolved and is applied in practice.

1.2 ADVANTAGES OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

With the rapid advancement of digital computers, CFD is poised to remain at the forefront of cutting edge research in the sciences of fluid dynamics and heat transfer. Also, the emergence of CFD as a practical tool in modern engineering practice is steadily attracting much interest and appeal.

There are many advantages in considering computational fluid dynamics. Firstly, the theoretical development of the computational sciences focuses on the construction and solution of the governing equations and the study of various approximations to these equations. CFD presents the perfect opportunity to study specific terms in the governing equations in a more detailed fashion. New paths of theoretical development are realized, which could not have been possible without the introduction of this branch of computational approach. Secondly, CFD complements experimental and analytical approaches by providing an alternative cost-effective means of simulating real fluid flows. Particularly, CFD substantially reduces lead times and costs in designs and production compared to experimental-based approach and offers the ability to solve a range of complicated flow problems where the analytical approach is lacking. These advantages are realized through the increasing performance power in computer hardware and its declining costs. Thirdly, CFD has the capacity of simulating flow conditions that are not reproducible in experimental tests found in geophysical and biological fluid dynamics, such as nuclear accident scenarios or scenarios that are too huge or too remote to be simulated experimentally (e.g., Indonesian Tsunami of 2004). Fourthly, CFD can provide rather detailed, visualized, and comprehensive information when compared to analytical and experimental fluid dynamics.

In practice, CFD permits alternative designs to be evaluated over a range of dimensionless parameters that may include the Reynolds number, Mach number, Rayleigh number, and flow orientation. The utilization of such an approach is usually very effective in the early stages of development for fluid-system designs. It may also prove to be significantly cheaper in contrast to the everincreasing spiraling cost of performing experiments. In many cases, where details of the fluid flow are important, CFD can provide detailed information and understanding of the flow processes to be obtained, such as the occurrence of flow separation or whether the wall temperature exceeds some maximum limit. With technological improvements and competition requiring a higher degree of optimal designs and as new high technological applications demand precise prediction of flow behaviors, experimental development may eventually be too costly to initiate. CFD presents an alternative option.

Nevertheless, the favorable appraisal of CFD thus far does not suggest that it will soon replace experimental testing as a means to gather information for design purposes. Instead it is considered a viable alternative. For example, wind-tunnel testing is a typical piece of experimental equipment that still provides invaluable information for the simulation of real flows at reduced scale. For the design of engineering components, especially in an aircraft that depends critically on the flow behavior, carrying out wind-tunnel experiments remains an economically viable alternative than full-scale measurement. Wind tunnels are very effective for obtaining the global information of the complete lift and drag on a body and the surface distributions at key locations. In other applications where CFD still remains a relatively primitive state of development, experiment-based approach remains the primary source of information—especially when complex flows such as multiphase flows, boiling, or condensation are involved.

In spite of the many upbeat assessments, the reader must also be fully aware of some inherent limitations of applying CFD. Numerical errors exist in computations, therefore there will be differences between the computed results and reality. Visualization of numerical solutions using vectors, contours, or animated movies of unsteady flows are by far the most effective ways of interpreting the huge amount of data generated from the numerical calculation. However, there is a danger that an erroneous solution that may look good may not correspond to the expected flow behavior! The authors have encountered numerous incorrect numerically produced flow characteristics that could have been interpreted as acceptable physical phenomena. Wonderfully bright color pictures may provide a sense of realism of the actual fluid mechanics inside the flow system, but they are worthless if they are not quantitatively correct. Numerical results obtained must always be thoroughly examined before they are believed; therefore a CFD user needs to learn how to properly analyze and make critical judgment on the computed results. This is one of the important aims of this book.

1.3 APPLICATION OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

1.3.1 AS A RESEARCH TOOL

CFD can be employed to better understand the physical events or processes that occur in the flow of fluids around and within the designated objects. These events are closely related to the action and interaction of phenomena associated with dissipation, diffusion, convection, boundary layers, and turbulence. Whether the flows are incompressible or compressible, many of the most important aspects inside these types of flows are nonlinear, and as a consequence often do not have any analytic solution. This motivates the need to seek numerical solutions for the partial differential equations and it would seem, in hindsight, to invalidate the use of linear algebra for the classification of the numerical methods. Our experiences have nevertheless demonstrated that such is not the case.

CFD, analogous to wind-tunnel tests, can be employed as a research tool to perform numerical experiments. We examine one of these numerical experiments, garnered from our research investigation of Chen et al. (2003), in order to demonstrate the feasible use of CFD as a research tool and impart some understanding of this philosophy. Figure 1.3(a) represents a snapshot taken for an unsteady flow past two side-by-side cylinders at a given instant of time. In Fig. 1.3(b), the comparative visualization of the numerical calculations based on a Large Eddy Simulation model attests to the power of CFD modeling to capture the complex flow characteristics. This example clearly illustrates how CFD can be utilized to better understand the observed flow structures and some important physical aspects of a flow field similar to a real laboratory experiment. Three side-by-side cylinders (shown in Fig. 1.4) is another example of how CFD simulations can work harmoniously with experiments, not only providing qualitative comparison but also a means to interpret some basic phenomenological aspects of the experimental condition. More importantly, numerical experiments can provide more comprehensive information and details of the flow as visualized in three-dimensions as shown in Fig. 1.4(c) when compared to laboratory experiments. These graphical examples clearly affirm the value of numerical experiments carried out within the framework of CFD.

FIGURE 1.3 Example of a CFD numerical experiment for a flow past two side-by-side cylinders: (a) Experimental observation and (b) Numerical simulation

FIGURE 1.4 Example of another CFD numerical experiment for a flow past three side-by-side cylinders: (a) Experimental observation, (b) Numerical simulation on a two-dimensional cross-sectional plane, and (c) Three-dimensional representation of the fluid flow through numerical simulation

1.3.2 AS AN EDUCATION TOOL TO LEARN BASIC THERMAL-FLUID SCIENCE

While CFD is typically studied at the graduate-level, the ease of use and broad capability of commercial CFD software packages have enabled this tool to be brought down into the undergraduate classroom. The authors believe in the two prime benefits of exposing undergraduates to CFD. Firstly, the experience with a more hands-on approach as adopted in this book to better understand the concepts of fluid flow and heat transfer greatly deepens the students’ understanding of the fluid-flow phenomena. In particular, the visualization capability greatly enhances the students’ intuition of the flow behavior. Secondly, such an approach opens the door to new classes of problems that can be solved by undergraduates who are no longer limited by the narrow range of classical flow solutions.

For an introductory engineering curriculum, such a CFD-based educational software package allows students to readily solve fluid dynamics problems without requiring a long training period. The mission is to expose students to essential CFD concepts and expand the learning experience with real-world applications, which is becoming an increasingly important skill in today’s job market. With user-friendly and student-specific graphical user interfaces guiding the students through the stages of geometry—creation and mesh generation, computational simulations and viewing the results by means of vectors, contours, or animated movies—the teaching of CFD has never been so visually exhilarating. Figure 1.5 illustrates some typical graphical user interfaces, obtained from FlowLab by ANSYS Inc., Fluent, illustrating some vector and contour plots for fluid flows in a sudden pipe expansion (left) and over an aerofoil (right). Within these graphical user interfaces, line graphs are also provided to assist users to assess the CFD simulations by either tracking the convergence history or monitoring the surface distribution of certain fluid forces such as the lift force through the lift coefficient. The prime derivative of these graphical user interfaces is certainly more than just introducing CFD technology to undergraduates. They are intended to arouse students’ interests to learn not only about the basic fluid dynamics but to entice them to further extend their learning experience to other transport phenomena that may exist in practice or in nature.

FIGURE 1.5 Example of a CFD-based education tool (Both courtesy of ANSYS Inc., Fluent)

1.3.3 AS A DESIGN TOOL

CFD, likewise as research and educational tools, is also becoming an integral part of engineering design and analysis environment in prominent industries. Companies are progressively seeking industrial solutions through the extensive use of CFD for the optimization of product development and processes and/or to predict the performance of new designs even before they are manufactured or implemented. Software applications can now provide numerical analyses and solutions to pertinent flow problems through the employment of common desktop computers. As a viable design tool, CFD has assisted by providing significant and substantial insights into the flow characteristics within the equipment and processes required to increase production, improve longevity, and decrease waste. The increasing computer processing power is certainly revolutionizing the use of CFD in new and existing industries. These industrial solutions are expounded in the following sections to further demonstrate the wide application of this specific technology in practice.

1.3.4 AEROSPACE

Computational fluid dynamics has certainly enjoyed a long and illustrious history of development and application in the aerospace and defense industries. To maintain an edge in a very competitive environment, CFD is playing a crucial role in overcoming many challenges faced by these industries in improving flight and in solving a diverse array of designs. Indeed, many engineers would associate CFD with its well-known application to aerodynamics by the calculation of the lifting force on an aircraft wingspan. Nevertheless, as methods and resources have augmented in power and ease-of-use, practitioners have expanded the scope of application beyond the calculation of lift. Today, CFD is being applied to many more difficult operational problems that were too unwieldy to analyze or solve with computational tools in the past.

FIGURE 1.6 Example of CFD results for applications in aerospace and defense industries (Courtesy of ANSYS Inc., Fluent and U.S. Army Research Laboratory and ANSYS Inc., Fluent)

The simulation of fluid path lines in the vicinity of an F18 jet (left) and prediction of pressure coefficient contours at a 10° angle of attack around a supersonic missile system with grid fins (right) are illustrated in Fig. 1.6. These examples are just a small sampling of numerous applications in aerodynamic design and military application. There are also other applications that CFD has been employed in resolving a number of complex operational problems in aircraft designs, such as studying the impact of trailing vortices on the safe operation of successive aircraft taking-off and landing as well as enhancing the passenger and crew comfort by improving cabin ventilation, heating, and cooling. Efforts to better understand and suppress the noise produced by heavy artillery and the safe operation of a military helicopter upon firing a missile that could impinge on the airframe or the tail rotor are just some other operational ways how CFD is increasingly being employed in military applications. As a versatile, robust, and powerful tool, CFD is rigorously meeting the broad physical modeling demands to investigate relevant complex phenomena in aerospace and defense-related designs. CFD is undoubtedly becoming a household simulation tool within these industries since the need to save time and money by reducing development costs and accelerate time-to-market and improving the overall performance of system configurations are becoming more prevalent.

1.3.5 AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING

Automobile engineers are increasingly relying on more simulation techniques to bring forth new vehicle design concepts to fruition. Computer-aided engineering has been at the forefront of creating innovative new internal systems that will better enhance the overall driving experience, improve driver and passenger comfort and safety, and advance fuel economy. Computational fluid dynamics has long been an essential element in automotive design and manufacture. Besides the aerospace and aerodynamics industries, this branch of engineering has also embraced much of this technology in research as well as in practice; the use of CFD is well entrenched in many disciplines as the engineering simulation tool for even the most difficult challenges.

CFD in automotive engineering has provided many advantages. This technology has delivered the ability to shorten cycles, optimize existing engineering components and systems to improve energy efficiency and meet strict standards and specifications, improve in-car environment, and study the important external aerodynamics as illustrated in Fig. 1.7. Specifically, CFD has shown measurable results through decreasing emissions with power train and engine analyses, increasing fuel economy, durability, and performance through aerodynamic investigations and increasing reliability of brake components. As in the aerospace industry, CFD has been used to determine the effects of local geometry changes on the aerodynamic forces and provides a significant capability to directly compare a multitude of vehicle designs. This reduces the dependence on time-consuming expensive clay models and wind-tunnel experiments and delivers quicker design turn-around.

More importantly, CFD modeling has provided insights into features of in-cylinder flows that would otherwise be too difficult and expensive to obtain experimentally.

FIGURE 1.7 Examples of automotive aerodynamics (Both courtesy of ANSYS Inc., Fluent)

FIGURE 1.8 Example of CFD applications in a diesel internal combustion engine (Courtesy of ANSYS Inc., Fluent, Internal Combustion Engine Design)

Numerical simulations allow the ease of investigating different valve and port design that can lead to improved engine performance through better breathing and more induction change distribution. Within the cylinder itself, moving and deforming grids permit the means of simulating the piston and valve motion (see Fig. 1.8) for a diesel internal combustion engine. The intake runner is on the left and the exhaust runner is on the right. Here, CFD allows engineers to understand how changes in port and combustion chamber design affect the engine performance, such as volume efficiency or swirl and tumble characteristics. The flow physics, described by the piston movement from the top dead center down to the bottom dead center and subsequently returning to its original position within the combustion chamber, allows engineers to examine in detail the transient flow patterns inside the cylinder during the complete engine cycle. Cold flow simulations such as this address many challenging problems faced by engineers in the automotive industry. Through the application of dynamic mesh adaptation, CFD simulations of internal combustion engines are being performed with greater speed and the ease-of-use meeting the competitive progressive demands in the automotive industry.

Biomedical Science and Engineering

Medical researchers are nowadays relying on simulation tools to assist in predicting the behavior of circulatory blood flow inside the human body. Computational simulations can provide invaluable information that is extremely difficult to be obtained experimentally; they also allow many variations of fluid dynamics problems to be parametrically studied. Figure 1.9 illustrates just one of the many sample applications of CFD in the biomedical area where the blood flow through an abnormal artery has been predicted. With the breadth of physical models and advances in areas of fluid-structure interaction, particle tracking, turbulence modeling and better meshing facilities, rigorous CFD analysis is increasingly performed to study the fluid phenomena inside the human vascular system. Medical simulations of circulatory functions offer many benefits. They can lower the chances of postoperative complications, assist in developing better surgical procedures, and deliver a good understanding of biological processes, as well as more efficient and less destructive medical equipment such as blood pumps. For example, CFD is being increasingly employed via virtual prototyping to recommend the best design for surgical reconstructions, such as carotid endarterectomy (a sample computational mesh is shown in Fig. 1.10), and to better understand the blood flow through an aneurysm in the abdominal artery.

CFD is also gaining an enormous interest in the pharmaceutical industries. With the everincreasing pollution levels causing respiratory problems and frequent asthma attacks, the need has never been greater to predict and optimize inhaled therapies. CFD can provide essential insights by simulating the entire drug delivery process for particulate, aerosol, and gaseous drug types—from the inception of device design—through the airways and down into the lungs of the pulmonary system. Through sophisticated multiphase models, the motion of aerosol droplets and drug particles and their transport/deposition characteristics within the airways are predicted to ascertain the drug concentration in the lungs, as shown by the example exemplifying the modeling of particle formation/dispersion from nasal sprayers and particle transport/deposition in the nasal cavity in Fig. 1.11. In order to better emulate the actual fluid flow through the airways of the bronchial tree of the pulmonary system such as shown in Fig. 1.12, medical images obtained from accurate CT or MRI scans are converted into a geometrical model, which are subsequently used for advanced CFD flow simulations. Through these CFD simulations, deposition and uptake can be customized in a manner targeting particular drugs, delivery devices, diseases, and even individual patients.

FIGURE 1.9 CFD prediction of time-dependent wall shear stress (WSS) fluctuation at the narrowest point

FIGURE 1.10 Example of carotid artery bifurcation computational meshes

As demands for new and better healthcare products continue to swell at a rapid pace, health companies will be required to perform more research and develop promising new products. Within these diverse healthcare sectors such as biomedical, pharmaceuticals, and other areas associated with medical equipment and general-health personal products, computational fluid dynamics is becoming an important tool in the identification and improvement of new products to meet the surging market aided primarily by the aging population.

FIGURE 1.11 Example of CFD application for particle formation/dispersion from nasal sprayers and particle transport/deposition in the nasal cavity

FIGURE 1.12 Example of bronchial tree geometry created from CT data for CFD simulation

1.3.6 CHEMICAL AND MINERAL PROCESSING

Many world necessities revolve around the chemical and mineral processing industries. By applying large quantities of heat and energy to physically or chemically deform raw materials, these industries have certainly helped to mould essential products for food and health as well as vital advanced technological equipments in computing and biotechnology. In the face of increasing industrial competitiveness, these industries are confronted with major challenges to meet the world’s demands and needs for the present without compromising the future. This translates into making the operational processes more energy efficient, safer, and flexible while better containing and reducing emissions.

For example, improving the performance of gas-sparged stirred tank reactors is considered to be of paramount importance in the chemical industry. Figure 1.13 presents contours of different bubble size distribution within the stirred tank accompanied by the local flow behavior, indicated by velocity vectors, around one of the rotating blades. The detailed information of the transport of liquid and gases through the use of CFD and population balance approaches ensures that engineers have the best available possible data to work with in order to increase yield by improving fluid flows, thereby reducing operating costs and increasing system efficiency.

FIGURE 1.13 Example of CFD application in the simulation of gas-sparged stirred tank reactor (Courtesy of ANSYS Inc.,