A catastrophic debris flow in the Wenchuan Earthquake area,July 2013：characteristics,formation,and risk reduction

In the Wenchuan Earthquake area,many co-seismic landslides formed blocking-dams in debris flow channels. This blocking and bursting of landslide dams amplifies the debris flow scale and results in severe catastrophes. The catastrophic debris flow that occurred in Qipan gully(Wenchuan,Southwest China) on July 11,2013 was caused by intense rainfall and upstream cascading bursting of landslide dams. To gain an understanding of the processes of dam bursting and subsequent debris flow scale amplification effect,we attempted to estimate the bursting debris flow peak discharges along the main gully and analyzed the scale amplification process. The results showed that the antecedent and triggering rainfalls for 11 July debris flow event were 88.0 mm and 21.6 mm,respectively. The event highlights the fact that lower rainfall intensity can trigger debris flows after the earthquake. Calculations of the debris flow peak discharge showed that the peak discharges after the dams-bursting were 1.17–1.69 times greater than the upstream peak discharge. The peak discharge at the gully outlet reached 2553 m^3/s which was amplified by 4.76 times in comparison with the initial peak discharge in the upstream. To mitigate debris flow disasters,a new drainage channel with a trapezoidal V-shaped cross section was proposed. The characteristic lengths(h1 and h2) under optimal hydraulic conditions were calculated as 4.50 m and 0.90 m,respectively.

An experimental study of drag reduction by nanofluids in slug two-phase flow of air and water through horizontal pipes

This study investigates the effect of injecting nanofluids containing nano-SiO_2 as drag reducing agents(DRA) at different concentrations on the pressure drop of air-water flow through horizontal pipe.The test fluid used in this study was air-water with nano-SiO_2 particles at 0.1%-1%mass concentration.The test sections of the experimental set-up were five pipes of the same length of 9 m with ID from 0.0127m-0.03175m(0.5 to 1.25 in).Airwater flow was run in slug flow regime under different volumetric flow rates.The results of drag reduction(η%)indicated that the addition of DRA could be efficient up to some dosage.Drag reduction performed much better for smaller pipe diameters than it did for larger ones.For various nanosilica concentrations,the maximum drag reduction was about 66.8%for 0.75%mass concentration of nanosilica.

CFD simulation of effect of anode configuration on gas–liquid flow and alumina transport process in an aluminum reduction cell

Numerical simulations of gas–liquid two-phase flow and alumina transport process in an aluminum reduction cell were conducted to investigate the effects of anode configurations on the bath flow, gas volume fraction and alumina content distributions. An Euler–Euler two-fluid model was employed coupled with a species transport equation for alumina content. Three different anode configurations such as anode without a slot, anode with a longitudinal slot and anode with a transversal slot were studied in the simulation. The simulation results clearly show that the slots can reduce the bath velocity and promote the releasing of the anode gas, but can not contribute to the uniformity of the alumina content. Comparisons of the effects between the longitudinal and transversal slots indicate that the longitudinal slot is better in terms of gas–liquid flow but is disadvantageous for alumina mixing and transport process due to a decrease of anode gas under the anode bottom surface. It is demonstrated from the simulations that the mixing and transfer characteristics of alumina are controlled to great extent by the anode gas forces while the electromagnetic forces(EMFs) play the second role.

Modeling of drag reduction in turbulent channel flow with hydrophobic walls by FVM method and weakly-compressible flow equations

In this paper the effects of hydrophobic wall on skin-friction drag in the channel flow are investigated through large eddy simulation on the basis of weaklycompressible flow equations with the MacCormack’s scheme on collocated mesh in the FVM framework. The slip length model is adopted to describe the behavior of the slip velocities in the streamwise and spanwise directions at the interface between the hydrophobic wall and turbulent channel flow. Simulation results are presented by analyzing flow behaviors over hydrophobic wall with the Smagorinky subgrid-scale model and a dynamic model on computational meshes of different resolutions. Comparison and analysis are made on the distributions of timeaveraged velocity, velocity fluctuations, Reynolds stress as well as the skin-friction drag. Excellent agreement between the present study and previous results demonstrates the accuracy of the simple classical second-order scheme in representing turbulent vertox near hydrophobic wall. In addition, the relation of drag reduction efficiency versus time-averaged slip velocity is established. It is also foundthat the decrease of velocity gradient in the close wall region is responsible for the drag reduction. Considering its advantages of high calculation precision and efficiency, the present method has good prospect in its application to practical projects.

Bionic Design and Finite Element Analysis of Elbow in Ice Transportation Cooling System

With the increase in mining depth, mine heat harm has appeared to be more prominent. The mine heat harm could be resolvedor reduced by ice refrigeration. Thus, ice transportation through pipeline becomes a critical problem; typically flowresistance occurs in the elbow. In the present study, according to the analysis of the surface morphology of fish scale, abiomimetic functional surface structure for the interior wall of elbow is designed. Based on the theory of liquid-solid two phaseflow, a CFD numerical simulation of ice-water mixture flowing through the elbow is carried out using finite element method.Conventional experiments of pressure drop and flow resistance for both bionic and common elbows are conducted to test theeffect of the bionic elbow on flow resistance reduction. It is found that with the increase in the ice mass fraction in the ice-watermixture, the effect of bionic elbow on resistance reduction becomes more obvious.

Tip-leakage flow loss reduction in a two-stage turbine using axisymmetric-casing contouring

In order to reduce the losses caused by tip-leakage flow, axisymmetric contouring is applied to the casing of a two-stage unshrouded high pressure turbine（HPT） of aero-engine in this paper. This investigation focuses on the effects of contoured axisymmetric-casing on the blade tipleakage flow. While the size of tip clearance remains the same as the original design, the rotor casing and the blade tip are obtained with the same contoured arc shape. Numerical calculation results show that a promotion of 0.14% to the overall efficiency is achieved. Detailed analysis indicates that it reduces the entropy generation rate caused by the complex vortex structure in the rotor tip region, especially in the tip-leakage vortex. The low velocity region in the leading edge（LE） part of the tip gap is enlarged and the pressure side/tip junction separation bubble extends much further away from the leading edge in the clearance. So the blocking effect of pressure side/tip junction separation bubble on clearance flow prevents more flow on the tip pressure side from leaking to the suction side, which results in weaker leakage vortex and less associated losses.

Tomographic PIV investigation on coherent vortex structures over shark-skin-inspired drag-reducing riblets

Nature has shown us that the microstructure of the skin of fast-swimming sharks in the ocean can reduce the skin friction drag due to the well-known shark-skin effect.In the present study,the effect of shark-skin-inspired riblets on coherent vortex structures in a turbulent boundary layer（TBL） is investigated.This is done by means of tomographic particle image velocimetry（TPIV） measurements in channel fl ws over an acrylic plate of drag-reducing riblets at a friction Reynolds number of 190.The turbulent fl ws over drag-reducing riblets are verifie by a planar time-resolved particle image velocimetry（TRPIV） system initially,and then the TPIV measurements are performed.Two-dimensional（2D） experimental results with a dragreduction rate of around 4.81% are clearly visible over triangle riblets with a peak-to-peak spacing s＋of 14,indicating from the drag-reducing performance that the buffer layer within the TBL has thickened;the logarithmic law region has shifted upward and the Reynolds shear stress decreased.A comparison of the spatial topological distributions of the spanwise vorticity of coherent vortex structures extracted at different wall-normal heights through the improved quadrant splitting method shows that riblets weaken the amplitudesof the spanwise vorticity when ejection（Q2） and sweep（Q4） events occur at the near wall,having the greatest effect on Q4 events in particular.The so-called quadrupole statistical model for coherent structures in the whole TBL is verified Meanwhile,their spatial conditional-averaged topological shapes and the spatial scales of quadrupole coherent vortex structures as a whole in the overlying turbulent fl w over riblets are changed,suggesting that the riblets dampen the momentum and energy exchange between the regions of near-wall and outer portion of the TBL by depressing the bursting events（Q2 and Q4）,thereby reducing the skin friction drag.

THE NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF FLOW IN ALUMINUM REDUCTION CELLS

The electromagnetic force causes a circulation of both cryolite and the metal in the aluminum reduction cells. This motion has the effect of reducing the current efficiency of the cell, and increases the distance between the an- ode and the cathode. Using the time-averaged Navier-Stokes equations and the K-e model of turbulence this paper numerically calculated the distributions of velocities, pressure, turbulent kinetic energy in the cells and deforma- tion of the interface of cryolite and metal. These results may be used to control the process of production and to improve the design of the cells.

Effect of Operational Changes in Reducing Fish Impingement at a Power Plant in Ohio, USA

Both intake volumetric flow and through-screen velocity （the velocity of water as it passes through the screen） are important variables affecting fish impingement at industrial water intake structures including those at power plants. However, there are limited data available on quantitative assessments of impingement following changes in power plant operation such as reduced volumetric flow and intake velocity. Impingement studies were conducted at Bay Shore Power Plant in 2005-2006 （baseline） and again in 2013-2014 following fish protection mitigation which included reduced intake volumetric flows （from 33.5 m^3·s^-1 to 9.1 cm·s^-1）, a reduced through-screen velocity （from approximately 79.2 cm·s^-1 to 11.6 cm·s^-1）, modified traveling screens and installation of a fish-return system to gently and quickly remove any fish that were impinged back into the waterbody. A comparison of baseline and post-mitigation results suggested that with this mitigation in place, impingement reductions can exceed 90% for robust dominant fish species in the area.