THREE-DIMENSIONAL COUPLED IMPELLER-VOLUTE SIMULATION OF FLOW IN CENTRIFUGAL PUMP AND PERFORMANCE PREDICTION

A three-dimensional turbulent flow through an entire centrifugal pump is simulated using k-ε turbulence model modified by rotation and curvature, SIMPLEC method and body-fitted coordinate. The velocity and pressure fields are obtained for the pump under various working conditions, which is used to predict the head and hydraulic efficiency of the pump, and the results correspond well with the measured values. The calculation results indicate that the pressure is higher on the pressure side than that on the suction side of the blade; The relative velocity on the suction side gradually decreases from the impeller inlet to the outlet, while increases on the pressure side, it finally results in the lower relative velocity on the suction side and the higher one on the pressure side at the impeller outlet; The impeller flow field is asymmetric, i.e. the velocity and pressure fields arc totally different among all channels in the impeller; In the volute, the static pressure gradually increases with the flow route, and a large pressure gratitude occurs in the tongue; Secondary flow exists in the rear part of the spiral.

Satellite-based RAR performance simulation for measuring directional ocean wave spectrum based on SAR inversion spectrum

Some missions have been carried out to measure wave directional spectrum by synthetic aperture radar （SAR） and airborne real aperture radar （RAR） at a low incidence.Both them have their own advantages and limitations.Scientists hope that SAR and satellite-based RAR can complement each other for the research on wave properties in the future.For this study,the authors aim to simulate the satellite-based RAR system to validate performance for measuring the directional wave spectrum.The principal measurements are introduced and the simulation methods based on the one developed by Hauser are adopted and slightly modified.To enhance the authenticity of input spectrum and the wave spectrum measuring consistency for SAR and satellite-based RAR,the wave height spectrum inversed from Envisat ASAR data by cross spectrum technology is used as the input spectrum of the simulation system.In the process of simulation,the sea surface,backscattering signal,modulation spectrum and the estimated wave height spectrum are simulated in each look direction.Directional wave spectrum are measured based on the simulated observations from 0 ？ to 360 ？ .From the estimated wave spectrum,it has an 180 ？ ambiguity like SAR,but it has no special high wave number cut off in all the direction.Finally,the estimated spectrum is compared with the input one in terms of the dominant wave wavelength,direction and SWH and the results are promising.The simulation shows that satellite-based RAR should be capable of measuring the directional wave properties.Moreover,it indicates satellite-based RAR basically can measure waves that SAR can measure.

Performance analysis of a 2-stroke micro free-piston swing engine

The micro free-piston swing engine （MFPSE） is a new structure, free-piston internal combustion engine. The dynamic model integrated MFPSE with a power generator and thermodynamic models in compression, power and scavenge processes based on the open thermodynamic systems were presented. A simulation was executed at given geometric parameters and initial conditions. The results manifest that the working principle of MFPSE is feasible.

Application and dynamical performance simulation of tooth surface measured data of hypoid gear

The tooth surface shape of hypoid gear is very complicated, and tooth surface accuracy of hypoid gear can be measured by using the latticed measurement and scanning measurement. Advantages and disadvantages of the two measurement patterns are compared and application of their measurement data on hypoid gear＇s quality management is analyzed. How to use these measurement data to simulate the dynamical performance of hypoid gear is researched, and the intelligent predicton of the dynamical performance indexes of contact spot, root stress, vibration exciting forces and load distribution and hertz contact stress on the tooth surface are carried out. This research work has an important guiding sense to design and ma- chine hypoid gear with low vibration and noise.

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT OF CENTRIFUGAL FAN BY MEANS OF NUMERICAL SIMULATION

Numerical simulation is used to investigate the flow field in a model centrifugal fan for steam power stations in order to improve the performance. During testing the model fan, it is found that the efficiency is only 62.5% with inlet box, without it the efficiency is 83%. In addition, the strong vibration of test rig is observed with inlet box. It would be highly desirable if the aerodynamics of the fan could be studied. Therefore, numerical simulation is carried out to investigate the internal flow characteristics of a model fan with inlet box. The results from CFD analysis show that the whole region of the inlet box is occupied by a spiral vortex rotating inversely as the rotor＇s direction, which significantly affect the most flow＇region inside the fan. For this reason, a dummy plate is arranged in the inlet box to impede the generation of the spiral vortex, the results from CFD after the reform demonstrate that the modification is quiet effective, the former large spiral vertex has been destroyed effectively, the large one is superseded in favor of two small vortexes. However, two small vortexes have little effect on the inner flow of the rotor and the following parts. Finally, the efficiency of the model fan is improved by the test and the strong vibration of the test rig disappears. This type of modification has been used in steam power stations, the fan efficiency raises to 84% successfully.

Effects of Rotor Solidity on the Performance of Impulse Turbine for OWC Wave Energy Converter

Impulse turbine, working as a typical self-rectifying turbine, is recently utilized for the oscillating water column（OWC） wave energy converters, which can rotate in the same direction under the bi-directional air flows. A numerical model established in Fluent is validated by the corresponding experimental results. The flow fields, pressure distribution and dimensionless evaluating coefficients can be calculated and analyzed. Effects of the rotor solidity varying with the change of blade number are investigated and the suitable solidity value is recommended for different flow coefficients.

Numerical Investigation of Flow Motion and Performance of A Horizontal Axis Tidal Turbine Subjected to A Steady Current

Horizontal axis tidal turbines have attracted more and more attentions nowadays, because of their convenience and low expense in construction and high efficiency in extracting tidal energy. The present study numerically investigates the flow motion and performance of a horizontal axis tidal turbine with a supporting vertical cylinder under steady current. In the numerical model, the continuous equation and incompressible Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations are solved, and the volume of fluid method is employed to track free surface motion. The RNG k-ε model is adopted to calculate turbulence transport while the fractional area/volume obstacle representation method is used to describe turbine characteristics and movement. The effects of installation elevation of tidal turbine and inlet velocity on the water elevation, and current velocity, rotating speed and resultant force on turbine are discussed. Based on the comparison of the numerical results, a better understanding of flow structure around horizontal axis tidal turbine and turbine performance is achieved.

Development and Application of Decision Support Model for the Performance Optimization of Office Buildings Based on Grasshopper

With the expansion of the office building area,the energy consumption of office buildings is growing.High⁃performance building design contributes to energy saving and the development of green buildings.However,there is a lack of high⁃performance building tools and the workflow is often time⁃consuming.The building performance simulation,multiple objective optimizations,and the decision support model are the new approaches of high⁃performance building design.This paper proposes a newly developed decision support model,a high⁃performance building decision model named HPBuildingDSM,which integrates the building performance simulation,building performance multiple objective optimizations,building performance sampling,and parameter sensitivity analysis to design high⁃performance office buildings.In this research,the HPBuildingDSM was operated to search for the desirable office building design results with low⁃energy and high⁃quality daylighting performances.The simulated results had better daylighting performance and lower energy consumption,whose UDI100-2000 was 37.94%and annual energy consumption performance was 76.28 kWh/(m2·a),indicating a better building performance than the optimized results in the previous case study.

GPPre:A Python⁃Based Tool in Grasshopper for Office Building Performance Optimization

With the development of the economic and low⁃carbon society,high⁃performance building(HPB)design plays an increasingly important role in the architectural area.The performance of buildings usually includes the building energy consumption,building interior natural daylighting,building surface solar radiation,and so on.Building performance simulation(BPS)and multiple objective optimizations(MOO)are becoming the main methods for obtaining a high performance building in the design process.Correspondingly,the BPS and MOO are based on the parametric tools,like Grasshopper and Dynamo.However,these tools are lacking the data analysis module for designers to select the high⁃performance building more conveniently.This paper proposes a toolkit“GPPre”developed based on the Grasshopper platform and Python language.At the end of this paper,a case study was conducted to verify the function of GPPre,which shows that the combination of the sensitivity analysis(SA)and MOO module in the GPPre could aid architects to design the buildings with better performance.

Architecture-level performance/power tradeoff in network processor design

Network processors are used in the core node of network to flexibly process packet streams. With the increase of performance, the power of network processor increases fast, and power and cooling become a bottleneck. Architecture-level power conscious design must go beyond low-level circuit design. Architectural power and performance tradeoff should be considered at the same time. Simulation is an efficient method to design modem network processor before making chip. In order to achieve the tradeoff between performance and power, the processor simulator is used to design the architecture of network processor. Using Netbeneh, Commubench benchmark and processor simulator-SimpleScalar, the performance and power of network processor are quantitatively evaluated. New performance tradeoff evaluation metric is proposed to analyze the architecture of network processor. Based on the high performance lnteI IXP 2800 Network processor eonfignration, optimized instruction fetch width and speed ,instruction issue width, instruction window size are analyzed and selected. Simulation resuits show that the tradeoff design method makes the usage of network processor more effectively. The optimal key parameters of network processor are important in architecture-level design. It is meaningful for the next generation network processor design.

Plus Energy Buildings:A Numerical Case Study

The feasibility of Plus Energy Building for a sample relevant case is investigated.After a literature review aimed to identify key aspects of this type of buildings,a preliminary evaluation of the thermal performance of a building constructed using conventional material is presented together with a parametric analysis of the impact of typical influential parameters.Solar domestic hot water(SDHW)and photovoltaic systems(PV)are considered in the study.Numerical simulations indicate that for the examined sample case(Beirut in Lebanon)the total annual energy need of conventional building is 87.1 kWh/y.m^(2).About 49%of energy savings can be achieved by improving the building envelope and installing energy efficient technologies.Moreover,about 90%of energy savings in domestic hot water production can be achieved by installing a SDHW system composed of two solar collectors connected in series.Finally,the addition of a grid connected PV array system can significantly mitigate the energy needs of the building leading to an annual excess of energy.

Review and Development Trends of Dynamic Adaptive Building Skin Research Based on CiteSpace Analysis

Building skin plays an important role in reducing energy consumption,and low-carbon ecology has become the development goal of architecture all over the world.Through the dynamic control of variable components on the surface,the building with dynamic adaptive building skin can better adapt to the climate,thus achieving better energy saving effects.By searching the articles in the web of science database and using CiteSpace software for visualization analysis,this paper analyzes the research process,research hotspot and research trend of dynamic adaptive building skin from the perspectives of time,quantity,distribution domain,representative experts and articles,institutions,keywords,co-citations and main research contents.It is concluded that the development trend of dynamic adaptive building skin includes the application of efficiency simulation,new materials,bionic technology,and the combination of solar photovoltaics.

Coding Scheme for Ka-Band Fixed Satellite Communication System

The performance analysis and simulation of coding schemes based on the modeling Ka band fixed satellite channel have been presented. The results indicate that concatenated codes with large inner interleaving depth have good performance and high spectrum efficiency. The studies also show that simple block interleaving is very effective in combating the slow frequency nonselective fading of Ka band.

EVALUATION OF SMALL ANIMAL IMAGING UNDER DIFFERENT SCAN CONDITIONS

To evaluae small animal imaging with individual different high voltage, filter thickness and tube current, an animal X-ray micro-computed tomography （micro-CT） system based on panel detector is developed and a rat is scanned by using the system with individual high voltage, tube current, filter thickness, and exposure time. A model is presented based on the Monte Carlo code PENELOPE for generating the X-ray spectra of X-ray tube used in the micro-CT system. A platform developed based on Matlab allows for calculating beam quality parameters, including the average energy of X-ray beam, the change of transmition rate and the input X-ray fluence. The factors affecting the signal difference to noise ratio （SDNR） of micro-CT are investigated and the relationship between SDNR and scan combinations is analyzed. A series of tools and methods are developed for small animal imaging and imaging performance evaluation in the field of small animal imaging.

Dynamics Modeling and Simulation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles with Appendages

To provide a simulation system platform for designing and debugging a small autonomous underwater vehicle＇s （AUV） motion controller, a six-degree of freedom （6-DOF） dynamic model for AUV controlled by thruster and fins with appendages is examined. Based on the dynamic model, a simulation system for the AUV＇s motion is established. The different kinds of typical motions are simulated to analyze the motion performance and the maneuverability of the AUV. In order to evaluate the influences of appendages on the motion performance of the AUV, simulations of the AUV with and without appendages are performed and compared. The results demonstrate the AUV has good maneuverability with and without appendages.

Simulation design of P–I–N-type all-perovskite solar cells with high efficiency

According to the good charge transporting property of perovskite, we design and simulate a p–i–n-type all-perovskite solar cell by using one-dimensional device simulator. The perovskite charge transporting layers and the perovskite absorber constitute the all-perovskite cell. By modulating the cell parameters, such as layer thickness values, doping concentrations and energy bands of n-, i-, and p-type perovskite layers, the all-perovskite solar cell obtains a high power conversion efficiency of 25.84%. The band matched cell shows appreciably improved performance with widen absorption spectrum and lowered recombination rate, so weobtain a high J_（sc） of 32.47 m A/cm^2. The small series resistance of the all-perovskite solar cell also benefits the high J_（sc）. The simulation provides a novel thought of designing perovskite solar cells with simple producing process, low production cost and high efficient structure to solve the energy problem.

Digital twin model of gas turbine and its application in warning of performance fault

The digital twin-driven performance model provides an attractive option for the warn gas-path faults of the gas turbines.However,three technical difficulties need to be solved:(1)low modeling precision caused by individual differences between gas turbines,(2)poor solution efficiency due to excessive iterations,and(3)the false alarm and missing alarm brought by the traditional fixed threshold method.This paper proposes a digital twin model-based early warning method for gas-path faults that breaks through the above obstacles from three aspects.Firstly,a novel performance modeling strategy is proposed to make the simulation effect close to the actual gas turbine by fusing the mechanism model and measurement data.Secondly,the idea of controlling the relative accuracy of model parameters is developed.The introduction of an error module to the existing model can greatly shorten the modeling cycle.The third solution focuses on the early warning based on the digital twin model,which self-learns the alarm threshold of the warning feature of gas-path parameters using the kernel density estimation.The proposed method is utilized to analyze actual measured data of LM2500+,and the results verify that the new-built digital model has higher accuracy and better efficiency.The comparisons show that the proposed method shows evident superiority in early warning of performance faults for gas turbines over other methods.

Chinese prototype building models for simulating the energy performance of the nationwide building stock

Building energy modeling(BEM)has become increasingly used in building energy conservation research.Prototype building models are developed to represent the typical urban building characteristics of a specific building type,meteorological conditions,and construction year.This study included four residential buildings and 11 commercial buildings to represent nationwide building types in China.With consideration of five climate zones and different construction years corresponding to national standards,a total of 151 prototype building models were developed.The building envelope properties,occupancy and energy-related behaviors,and heating,ventilation,and air-conditioning(HVAC)system characteristics were defined according to the corresponding building energy efficiency design standards,HVAC design standards,and through other sources,such as questionnaire surveys,on-site measurements,and literature,which reflect the real situation of existing buildings in China.Based on the developed prototype buildings,a large database of 9225 models in 270 cities was further developed to facilitate users to simulate building energy in different cities.In conclusion,the developed prototype building models can represent realistic building characteristics and construction practices of the most common residential and commercial buildings in China,serving as an important foundation for BEM.The models can be used for analyses related to building energy conservation research on typical individual buildings,including energy-saving technologies,advanced controls,and new policies,and providing a reference for the development of building energy codes and standards.

Application of CFD plug-ins integrated into urban and building design platforms for performance simulations:A literature review

The transformation of urban and building design into green development is conducive to alleviating resource and environmental problems.Building design largely determines pollutant emissions and energy consumption throughout the building life cycle.Full consideration of the impact of urban geometries on the microclimate will help construct livable and healthy cities.Computational fluid dynamics(CFD)simulations significantly improve the efficiency of assessing the microclimate and the performance of design schemes.The integration of CFD into design platforms by plug-ins marks a landmark development for the interaction of computer-aided design(CAD)and CFD,allowing architects to perform CFD simulations in their familiar design environments.This review provides a systematic overview of the classification and comprehensive comparison of CFD plug-ins in Autodesk Revit,Rhinoceros/Grasshopper,and SketchUp.The applications of CFD plug-ins in urban and building design are reviewed according to three types:single-objective,multi-objective,and coupling simulations.Two primary roles of CFD plug-ins integrated into the design process,including providing various micro-scale numerical simulations and optimizing the original design via feedback results,are analyzed.The issues of mesh generation,boundary conditions,turbulence models,and simulation accuracy during CFD plug-in applications are discussed.Finally,the limitations and future possibilities of CFD plug-ins are proposed.

Efficiency analysis of trilateral-cycle power systems for waste heat recovery-to-power generation

Numerous innovative heat recovery-to-power technologies have been resourcefully and technologically exploited to bridge the growing gap between energy needs and its sustainable and affordable supply.Among them,the proposed trilateral-cycle(TLC) power system exhibits high thermodynamic efficiency during heat recovery-to-power from low-to-medium temperature heat sources.The TLCs are proposed and analysed using n-pentane as working fluid for waste heat recovery-to-power generation from low-grade heat source to evaluate the thermodynamic efficiency of the cycles.Four different single stage TLC configurations with distinct working principles are modelled thermodynamically using engineering equation solver.Based on the thermodynamic framework,thermodynamic performance simulation and efficiency analysis of the cycles as well as the exergy efficiencies of the heating and condensing processes are carried out and compared in their efficiency.The results show that the simple TLC,recuperated TLC,reheat TLC and regenerative TLC operating at subcritical conditions with cycle high temperature of 473 K can attain thermal efficiencies of 21.97%,23.91%,22.07% and 22.9%,respectively.The recuperated TLC attains the highest thermodynamic efficiency at the cycle high temperature because of its lowest exergy destruction rates in the heat exchanger and condenser.The efficiency analysis carried out would assist in guiding thermodynamic process development and thermal integration of the proposed cycles.