GPU parallel computation of dendrite growth competition in forced convection using the multi-phase-field-lattice Boltzmann model

A graphics-processing-unit(GPU)-parallel-based computational scheme is developed to realize the competitive growth process of converging bi-crystal in two-dimensional states in the presence of forced convection conditions by coupling a multi-phase field model and a lattice Boltzmann model.The elimination mechanism in the evolution process is analyzed for the three conformational schemes constituting converging bi-crystals under pure diffusion and forced convection conditions,respectively,expanding the research of the competitive growth of columnar dendrites under melt convection conditions.The results show that the elimination mechanism for the competitive growth of converging bi-crystals of all three configurations under pure diffusion conditions follows the conventional Walton-Chalmers model.When there is forced convection with lateral flow in the liquid phase,the anomalous elimination phenomenon of unfavorable dendrites eliminating favorable dendrites occurs in the grain boundaries.In particular,the anomalous elimination phenomenon is relatively strong in conformation 1 and conformation 2 when the orientation angle of unfavorable dendrites is small,and relatively weak in conformation 3.Moreover,the presence of convection increases the tip growth rate of both favorable and unfavorable dendrites in the grain boundary.In addition,the parallelization of the multi-phase-field-lattice Boltzmann model is achieved by designing the parallel computation of the model on the GPU platform concerning the computerunified-device-architecture parallel technique,and the results show that the parallel computation of this model based on the GPU has absolute advantages,and the parallel acceleration is more obvious as the computation area increases.

Development and Application of Multi-phase Nitrides Bonded Silicon Carbide Lintel Blocks for Dry Quenching Furnaces

Multi-phase nitrides bonded silicon carbide lintel blocks were prepared using industrial SiC(SiC≥98 mass%,3-0.5,≤0.5 and≤0.044 mm),Si powder(Si≥98 mass%,≤0.044 mm),and SiO2 micropowder(SiO2≥96 mass%,d50=0.15 pm)as raw materials,and calcium lignosulfonate as the additive,batching,mixing,and molding on a vibration pressure molding machine,drying and then firing at 1420℃for 10 h in high-purity N2.The apparent porosity,the bulk density,the cold modulus of rupture,the hot modulus of rupture,and the linear expansion coefficient of the samples were tested.The phase composition and the microstructure of the samples at different nitriding depths(50,100,and 150 mm)were analyzed by XRD and SEM.The field application effects of the blocks were studied.The results show that:(1)the multi-phase nitrides bonded silicon carbide refractories can dynamically adjust their own phase composition and minimize structural and thermal stresses,improving the service life of key parts of dry quenching furnaces;(2)calcium lignosulfonate can improve the nitriding micro-environment of multi-phase nitrides bonded silicon carbide lintel blocks,successfully increasing the effective nitriding thickness of the blocks to 300 mm;(3)Sinosteel LI RR provides a unique concept in the design of materials and block types as well as the stable and scientific overall structure,promoting the industrialization process of dry quenching furnaces with long service life in China.

Numerical simulation of complex multi-phase fluid of casting process and its applications

The fluid of casting process is a typical kind of multi-phase flow. Actually, many casting phenomena have close relationship with the multi-phase flow, such as molten metal filling process, air entrapment, slag movement, venting process of die casting, gas escaping of lost foam casting and so on. Obviously, in order to analyze these phenomena accurately, numerical simulation of the multi-phase fluid is necessary. Unfortunately, so far, most of the commercial casting simulation systems do not have the ability of multi-phase flow modeling due to the difficulty in the multi-phase flow calculation. In the paper, Finite Different Method (FDM) technique was adopt to solve the multi-phase fluid model. And a simple object of the muiti-phase fluid was analyzed to obtain the fluid rates of the liquid phase and the entrapped air phase.

A proposed NMR solution for multi-phase flow fluid detection

In the petroleum industry,detection of multi-phase fluid flow is very important in both surface and down-hole measurements.Accurate measurement of high rate of water or gas multi-phase flow has always been an academic and industrial focus.NMR is an efficient and accurate technique for the detection of fluids;it is widely used in the determination of fluid compositions and properties.This paper is aimed to quantitatively detect multi-phase flow in oil and gas wells and pipelines and to propose an innovative method for online nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR)detection.The online NMR data acquisition,processing and interpretation methods are proposed to fill the blank of traditional methods.A full-bore straight tube design without pressure drop,a Halbach magnet structure design with zero magnetic leakage outside the probe,a separate antenna structure design without flowing effects on NMR measurement and automatic control technology will achieve unattended operation.Through the innovation of this work,the application of NMR for the real-time and quantitative detection of multi-phase flow in oil and gas wells and pipelines can be implemented.

A new analytical model for thermal stresses in multi-phase materials and lifetime prediction methods

Based on the fundamental equations of the mechanics of solid continuum, the paper employs an analytical model for determination of elastic thermal stresses in isotropic continuum represented by periodically distributed spherical particles with different distributions in an infinite matrix, imaginarily divided into identical cells with dimensions equal to inter-particle distances, containing a central spherical particle with or without a spherical envelope on the particle surface. Consequently, the multi-particle-（envelope）- matrix system, as a model system regarding the analytical modelling, is applicable to four types of multi-phase materials. As functions of the particle volume fraction v, the inter-particle distances dl, d2, d3 along three mutually per- pendicular axes, and the particle and envelope radii, R1 and R2, respectively, the thermal stresses within the cell, are originated during a cooling process as a consequence of the difference in thermal expansion coefficients of phases rep- resented by the matrix, envelope and particle. Analytical-（experimental）-computational lifetime prediction methods for multi-phase materials are proposed, which can be used in engineering with appropriate values of parameters of real multi-phase materials.

Multi-phase field simulation of grain growth in multiple phase transformations of a binary alloy

This work establishes a temperature-controlled sequence function, and a new multi-phase-field model, for liquid- solid-solid multi-phase transformation by coupling the liquid-solid phase transformation model with the solid-solid phase transformation model. Taking an Fe-C alloy as an example, the continuous evolution of a multi-phase transformation is simulated by using this new model. In addition, the growth of grains affected by the grain orientation of the parent phase （generated in liquid-solid phase transformation） in the solid-solid phase transformation is studied. The results show that the morphology of ferrite grains which nucleate at the boundaries of the austenite grains is influenced by the orientation of the parent austenite grains. The growth rate of ferrite grains which nucleate at small-angle austenite grain boundaries is faster than those that nucleate at large-angle austenite grain boundaries. The difference of the growth rate of ferrites grains in different parent phase that nucleate at large-angle austenite grain boundaries, on both sides of the boundaries, is greater than that of ferrites nucleating at small-angle austenite grain boundaries.

INVESTIGATION OF VORTEX SHEDDING INDUCED HYDRODYNAMIC VIBRATION IN VORTEX STREET FLOWMETER

Vortex street flowmeter has been used in steady flow measurement for about three decades The benefits of this type of flowmeter include high accuracy,good linearty,wide measuring range,and excellent reliability However,in unsteady flow measurement,the pressure disturbance as well as the noise from the system or surrounding can reduce the signal to noise ratio of the flowmeter seriously Aimed to use vortex street flowmeters in unsteady flow measurement,the characteristics of the vortex shedding induced hydrodynamic vibration around the prism bluff body in a vortex street flowmeter are investigated numerically and by expriments The results show that the hydrodynamic vibrations with 180° phase shift occur at the axisymmetric points of the channel around the bluff body The most intense vibration occurs at the points on the lateral faces close to the base of the prism The results provide therefore a useful reference for developing an anti interference vortex flowmeter using the different ial sensing technique.

Mechanical properties of irradiated multi-phase polycrystalline BCC materials

Structure materials under severe irradiations in nuclear environments are known to degrade because of irradiation hardening and loss of ductility,resulting from irradiation-induced defects such as vacancies,interstitials and dislocation loops,etc.In this paper,we develop an elastic-viscoplastic model for irradiated multi-phase polycrystalline BCC materials in which the mechanical behaviors of individual grains and polycrystalline aggregates are both explored.At the microscopic grain scale,we use the internal variable model and propose a new tensorial damage descriptor to represent the geometry character of the defect loop,which facilitates the analysis of the defect loop evolutions and dislocation-defect interactions.At the macroscopic polycrystal scale,the self-consistent scheme is extended to consider the multiphase problem and used to bridge the individual grain behavior to polycrystal properties.Based on the proposed model,we found that the work-hardening coefficient decreases with the increase of irradiation-induced defect loops,and the orientation/loading dependence of mechanical properties is mainly attributed to the different Schmid factors.At the polycrystalline scale,numerical results for pure Fe match well with the irradiation experiment data.The model is further extended to predict the hardening effect of dispersoids in oxide-dispersed strengthened steels by the considering the Orowan bowing.The influences of grain size and irradiation are found to compete to dominate the strengthening behaviors of materials.

THE RATE-INDEPENDENT CONSTITUTIVE MODELING FOR POROUS AND MULTI-PHASE NANOCRYSTALLINE MATERIALS

To determine the time-independent constitutive modeling for porous and multi- phase nanocrystalline materials and understand the effects of grain size and porosity on their mechanical behavior, each phase was treated as a mixture of grain interior and grain bound- ary, and pores were taken as a single phase, then Budiansky＇s self-consistent method was used to calculate the Young＇s modulus of porous, possible multi-phase, nanocrystalline materials, the prediction being in good agreement with the results in the literature. Further, the established method is extended to simulate the constitutive relations of porous and possible multi-phase nanocrystalline materials with small plastic deformation in conjunction with the secant-moduli approach and iso-strain assumption. Comparisons between the experimental grain size and porosity dependent mechanical data and the corresponding predictions using the established model show that it appears to be capable of describing the time-independent mechanical behaviors for porous and multi-phase nanocrystalline materials in a small plastic strain range. Further discussion on the modification factor, the advantages and limitations of the model developed were present.

MULTI-SCALE AND MULTI-PHASE NANOCOMPOSITE CERAMIC TOOLS AND CUTTING PERFORMANCE

An advanced ceramic cutting tool material Al2O3/TiC/TiN （LTN） is developed by incorporation and dispersion of micro-scale TiC particle and nano-scale TiN particle in alumina matrix. With the optimal dispersing and fabricating technology, this multi-scale and multi-phase nanocomposite ceramic tool material can get both higher flexural strength and fracture toughness than that of A1203/TiC （LZ） ceramic tool material without nano-scale TiN particle, especially the fracture toughness can reach to 7.8 MPa . m^0.5. The nano-scale TiN can lead to the grain fining effect and promote the sintering process to get a higher density. The coexisting transgranular and intergranular fracture mode induced by micro-scale TiC and nano-scale TiN, and the homogeneous and densified microstructure can result in a remarkable strengthening and toughening effect. The cutting performance and wear mechanisms of the advanced multi-scale and multi-phase nanocomposite ceramic cutting tool are researched.

Multi-phase computer modeling and laboratory study of dust capture by an inertial Vortecone scrubber

Dust generated in mining and tunneling activities is hazardous to health of persons and safety of operations. These projects employ pick-milling machines to extract minerals and rock by mechanical breakage.The machines are equipped with flooded-bed scrubbers that encase dust particles within fine water films as particles encounter a flooded wire-mesh screen. A major disadvantage is that the screen gets clogged when particles become trapped within the wire mesh, reducing airflow through the scrubber and increasing ambient dust concentrations. Thus, the system requires frequent maintenance or replacement. The application of a Vortecone scrubber as an improved alternative to conventional fibrous type scrubbers is investigated. A Vortecone forces dust-laden air and water to follow a complex, rapidly swirling motion.The momentum drives dust particles towards the periphery where they are captured by the water film.The operating characteristics of a reduced-scale physical model of a Vortecone, with its primary axis mounted in the horizontal orientation, was analyzed numerically and experimentally. Computational fluid dynamics(CFD) models depicting the spraying action and multi-phase air/water flows using the volume of fraction(VOF) approach, are presented. Experimental results, utilizing an optical particle counting technique to establish the dust-cleaning capabilities of the model, are also described.

Numerical Solution of the Weight Function for Electromagnetic Flowmeter

A numerical solution of the weight function for a two-electrode electromagnetic flowmeter was proposed. The solution was obtained by using the finite element method based on the basic equation of a traditional two-electrode electromagnetic flowmeter. The two-dimensional distribution of the weight function of the electromagnetic flowmeter obtained was verified by the analytical solution. Three-dimensional distribution of the weight function was also presented in the paper. It can be employed to analyze the sensitivity and linearity of the electromagnetic flowmeter with non-uniform magnetic field, and even to assist the design of the excitation coil pair.

Study on hydrodynamic vibration in fluidic flowmeter

The characteristics of the fluidic flowmeter,which is a combination of impinged concave wall and bistable fluid amplifier,is investigated by experimental studies and numerical simulations. The numerical approaches are utilized to examine the time dependent flow field and pressure field inside the proposed flowmeter. The effect of varying structural parameters on flow characteristics of the proposed fluidic flowmeter is investigated by computational simulations for the optimization. Both the simulation and experimental results disclose that the hydrodynamic vibration,with the same intensity,frequency and 180° phase shift,occurs at axisymmetric points in the feedback channel of the fluidic flowmeter. Using the structural combination of impinged concave wall and bistable fluid amplifier and differential signal processing technique,a novel fluidic flowmeter with excellent immunity and improved sensibility is developed.

Influence of bluff body shape on wall pressure distribution in vortex flowmeter

To investigate the influence of bluff body shape on wall pressure distribution in a vortex flowmeter,experiments were conducted on a specially designed test section in a closed water rig at Reynolds numbers of 6.2×10 4-9.3×10 4.The cross sections of the bluff bodies were semicircular,square,and triangular shaped,and there were totally 21 pressure tappings along the conduit to acquire the wall pressures.It is found that the variation trends of wall pressures are basically identical regardless of the bluff body shapes.The wall pressures begin to diverge from 0.3D(D is the inner diameter of the vortex flowmeter) in front of the bluff body due to the diversity in shape,and all reach the minimum values at 0.3D behind the bluff body.A discrepancy between the triangular or square cylinder and the semicircular cylinder in wall pressure change is observed at 0-0.1D behind the bluff body.It is also found that the wall pressures and irrecoverable pressure loss coefficients increase with flow rates,and the triangular cylinder causes the smallest irrecoverable pressure loss at a fixed flow rate.

Application of empirical mode decomposition based energy ratio to vortex flowmeter state diagnosis

To improve the measurement performance, a method for diagnosing the state of vortex flowmeter under various flow conditions was presented. The raw sensor signal of the vortex flowmeter was adaptively decomposed into intrinsic mode functions using the empirical mode decomposition approach. Based on the empirical mode decomposition results, the energy of each intrinsic mode function was extracted, and the vortex energy ratio was proposed to analyze how the perturbation in the flow affected the measurement performance of the vortex flowmeter. The relationship between the vortex energy ratio of the signal and the flow condition was established. The results show that the vortex energy ratio is sensitive to the flow condition and ideal for the characterization of the vortex flowmeter signal. Moreover, the vortex energy ratio under normal flow condition is greater than 80%, which can be adopted as an indicator to diagnose the state of a vortex flowmeter.

Thermo-hydro-mechanical-air coupling finite element method and its application to multi-phase problems

In this paper, a finite element method （FEM）-based multi-phase problem based on a newly proposed thermal elastoplastic constitutive model for saturated/unsaturated geomaterial is discussed. A program of FEM named as SOFT, adopting unified field equations for thermo-hydro-mechanical-air （THMA） behavior of geomaterial and using finite element-finite difference （FE-FD） scheme for so/l-water-air three-phase coupling problem, is used in the numerical simulation. As an application of the newly proposed numerical method, two engineering problems, one for slope failure in unsaturated model ground and another for in situ heating test related to deep geological repository of high-level radioactive waste （HLRW）, are simulated. The model tests on slope failure in unsaturated Shirasu ground, carried out by Kitamura et al. （2007）, is simulated in the framework of soil-water-air three-phase coupling under the condition of constant temperature. While the in situ heating test reported by Munoz （2006） is simulated in the same framework under the conditions of variable temperature hut constant air pressure.

Research and Development on β Ray Ionization Gas Flowmeter

A new method of measuring gas flow in heavy or medium pipe based on the ionization effect of gas irradi ated with rays is presented. The mesurement principle of the flowmeter has been theoretically analyzed,the structure form and the base of relevant parameter’s choice of the flowmeter have been given, and theintellectual instrument is developed. The results of experiment show that the per formance of the flowmeter is stable, the precision can reach 1 to 1. 5 percent, and it has fairly capability to resist disturbance and pollution.

Application of Hilbert-Huang transform to denoising in vortex flowmeter

Due to piping vibration, fluid pulsation and other environmental disturbances, variations of amplitude and frequency to the raw signals of vortex flowmeter are imposed. It is difficult to extract vortex frequencies which indicate volumetric flowrate from noisy data, especially at low flowrates. Hilbert-Huang transform was adopted to estimate vortex frequency. The noisy raw signal was decomposed into different intrinsic modes by empirical mode decomposition, the time-frequency characteristics of each mode were analyzed, and the vortex frequency was obtained by calculating partial mode’s instantaneous frequency. Experimental results show that the proposed method can estimate the vortex frequency with less than 2% relative error; and in the low flowrate range studied, the denoising ability of Hilbert-Huang transform is markedly better than Fourier based algorithms. These findings reveal that this method is accurate for vortex signal processing and at the same time has strong anti-disturbance ability.

DESIGN,FABRICATION,TESTING AND MECHANICAL ANALYSIS OF BULK-MICROMACHINED FLOWMETERS

Micromachined piezoresistive flowmeters with four different types of sensing struc- tures have been designed,fabricated and tested.Piezoresistors were defined at the end of the sensors through p-diffusion,and their values were about 3.5kΩ.Wheatstone bridge was configured with the piezoresistors in order to measure the output response.The output voltage increases with increasing flow rate of air,obeying determined relationships.The testing results show that the sensors that are designed for measuring 10L/M in full operational range have desired sensitivities.The sensor chip is manufactured with bulk-micromachining technologies,requiring a set of seven masks.