Experimental study on the flow behaviour of water-sand mixtures in fractured rock specimens

The study of flow behaviour of water-sand mixtures in fractured rocks is of great necessity to understand the producing mechanism and prevention of water inrush and sand gushing accidents.A self-developed seepage test system is used in this paper to conduct laboratory experiments in order to study the influence of the particle size distribution,the void ratio,and the initial mass of Aeolian sand on the flow behavior.It is concluded that the water flow velocity is insensitive to the initial mass of the Aeolian sand but increases with the power exponent in the Talbot formula and the specimen height.The outflow of the Aeolian sand increases with the power exponent in the Talbot formula,the specimen height,and the initial mass of the Aeolian sand.Besides,the outflow of the Aeolian sand changes exponentially with the water flow velocity.Finally,it is found that the fractured specimen has a maximum sand filtration capacity beyond which the outflow of the Aeolian sand significantly increases with the initial mass of the Aeolian sand.

Study and Redesign of Aircooler System in a 16 MW Steam Turbine Surface Condenser at Neka Power Plant

According to the study of basic Rankin thermal cycle, the steam exhaust pressure of a typical steam turbine toward the condenser, plays a great role in the efficiency and the net output power of the steam turbine, so most surface condensers that are working in thermal power plants are kept at vacuum condition so that the maximum power of thermal cycle can be achieved. The vacuum pressure at condenser leads to the entering of air and Non-condensable gases from turbine gland seals to condenser so that the special air ejection equipment is being used to take apart air from steam and vent it to out of condenser. In this study, a special steam and air separator mechanism in an evacuating system called “Aircooler” at a 16 MW steam turbine condenser is being studied and the Fluent CFD software is utilized to analyze the behavior of steam plus air in a typical aircooler system of 16 MW steam turbine condenser of Neka power plant to find a way to reduce the risk of cooling tube rupture in aircooler ducts. The critical condition which tube rupture happens is determined and it is demonstrated that in hot seasons of year, by increasing the seawater cooling temperature and increasing in turbine steam exhaust pressure and temperature, the risk of tube rupture due to more mixture velocity at the first row of aircooler cooling tubes increases and also the effect of tube plugged condition on the performance of aircooler shows that the risk of other tubes rupture will increase and thus the efficiency of aircooler decreases due to more aircooler exhaust temperature. Finally, two modified plans at aircooler system design will be studied and simulated via Fluent CFD software which leads to reduce the risk of tube rupture. The results show that by modification of aircooler ducts and holes, the mixture air and steam flow velocity to first aircooler cooling tube row decreases significantly and causes the risk of tube rupture to decrease remarkably and also the exhaust temperature of aircooler decreases and causes the higher ejector performance.

Investigation of Hydroabrasion in Slurry Pipeline Elbows and T-junctions

The present study demonstrates the comparison of erosion rate of critical pipeline parts, namely elbow and T-junction which face the maximum erosion in a pipeline and may cause an early damage and failure of the system. CFD （computational fluid dynamics） with an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach coupled with an approved erosion model is applied to visualize the 3-D flow behavior of slurry flow in both parts and to predict the erosion rate and the location of erosion at the internal surfaces. The analysis of slurry erosion is performed in five steps; geometry and grid generation, grid study/refinement, fluid flow solution, solid particles tracking and finally, the erosion calculation. In previous publications in literature considering transportation of gas-solid flows in pipe parts, the application ofT-junctions instead of elbows for specified conditions in order to reduce the erosion is recommended. In this article, it is approved that for liquid-solid flows, the Stokes number is reasonably smaller than the values for gas-solid flows. This causes the solid particles tightly couple to the fluid phase and to travel more closely with the fluid streamlines. The effects of important influencing parameters such as feed flow velocity, solid concentration, particle size and shape are investigated in detail in current work. It was found that for liquid-solid flows, the erosion of T-junction for all of the mentioned influencing parameters, due to its geometrical specifications and Stokes number variation in comparison with gas-solid flows, is reasonably higher than erosion of elbow. Due to these findings, in contrary to the gas-solid mixture flows, application of T-junction instead of elbow for liquid-solid flow transportation is not recommended.

Predicting minimum fluidization velocities of multi-component solid mixtures

Employing well-established mixing rules for mean properties, appropriate expressions are derived for predicting minimum fluidization velocities of multi-component solid mixtures in terms of mono- component values for the velocity and the bed voidage at incipient fluidization. Based on flow regime and the mixing level of constituent species, it is found that these relationships differ significantly from each other, whether related to size-different or density-different mixtures. For mixed beds of size-different mixtures, the effect of volume contraction is accounted for by the mean voidage term, which is absent for segregated beds. Incorporating the volume-change of mixing leads to values of the mixture minimum fluidization velocities even lower than corresponding values for segregated bed, thus conforming to the trend reported in the literature. Size-different mixtures exhibit flow regime dependence irrespective of whether the bed is mixed or segregated. On the other hand, the mixing of constituent species does not affect the minimum fiuidization velocity of density-different mixtures, as the difference in the expres- sions for a segregated and a mixed system is rather inconsequential. Comparison with experimental data available in the literature is made to test the efficacy of the minimum fluidization velocity expressions derived here.

Inhibition Effect of Water Injection on Afterburning of Rocket Motor Exhaust Plume

One of the most important characteristic signatures of the exhaust plume from rocket motor is the aflerbuming phenomenon, and the injected water into the plume could inhibit the afterburning. The calculation model for the gas-liquid multiphase flow field with chemical reaction in the plume is built. By inducing the energy source terms caused by the vaporization of liquid water, condensation of the vapor and chemical reaction in the energy equation, the gas-liquid multiphase flow field and the afterburning phenomenon are calculated in a coupling way. Mixture multiphase flow model is used to calculate the gas-liquid flow field, and the vaporization mechanism is used to investigate the water vaporization process. The temperature contours are obtained and accord well with the experimental photos. The mass fraction contours of primary species are obtained, which can indicate the extent of inhibition effect of water injection on the afterburning phenomenon in the plume. When water is injected into the plume, the region of aflerburning reduces a lot, and temperature on the ground wall declines rapidly, which can decrease the ablation of the combustion gas to the launch ground.