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Pressure-based methods have been demonstrated to be powerful for solving many practical problems in engineering. In many pressure-based methods, inner iterative processes are proposed to get efficient solutions. However, the number of inner iterations is set empirically and kept fixed during the whole computation for different problems, which is overestimated in some computations but underestimated in other computations. This paper aims to develop an algorithm with adaptive inner iteration processes for steady and unsteady incompressible flows.

In this work, with the use of two different criteria in two inner iterative processes, a mechanism is proposed to control inner iteration processes to make the number of inner iterations vary during computing according to different problems. By doing so, adaptive inner iteration processes can be achieved.

The adaptive inner iterative algorithm is verified to be valid by solving classic steady and unsteady incompressible problems. Results show that the adaptive inner iteration algorithm works more efficient than the fixed inner iteration one.

The algorithm with adaptive inner iteration processes is first proposed in this paper. As the mechanism for controlling inner iteration processes is based on physical meaning and the feature of iterative calculations, it can be used in any methods where there exist inner iteration processes. It is not limited for incompressible flows. The performance of the adaptive inner iteration processes in compressible flows is conducted in a further study.

Based on the normalized variable diagram, the weakness of the Gaskell and Lau's convective boundedness criterion (GL‐CBC) is revealed by numerical example. By careful consideration of the smoothness of the normalized variable variation pattern, more rigorous constraints on the interface value interpolation are found. A new CBC is thus proposed, whose feasibility and correctness are demonstrated by the inspection of ten existing bounded schemes and a numerical example.

To provide some heat transfer and friction factor results for fin‐and‐tube heat transfer surfaces which may be used in air conditioning industry.

Numerical simulation approach was adopted to compare the plain plate fin and three types of radial slotted fin surfaces.

It is found that at the same frontal velocity (1.0‐3 m/s) the plain plate fin has the lowest heat transfer rate with the smallest pressure drop. The full slotted fin surface has the highest heat transfer rate with the largest pressure drop penalty. The partially slotted fin (where the strips are mainly located in the rear part of the fin) and the back slotted fin are some what in between. Under the identical pumping power constraint, the partially slotted fin surface behaves the best.

The results are only valid the two‐row fin surface.

The results are very useful for the design of two‐row tube fin surfaces with high efficiency.

This paper provides original information of slotted fin surface with radial strips from the field synergy principle.

The effect of the tube wall heat conduction on the natural convection in a tilted long cylindrical envelope with constant, but different temperature of the two ends and an adiabatic outer surface was numerically investigated. The envelope is supposed to be a simplified model for the pulse tube in a pulse tube refrigerator when the pulse tube is positioned at different orientations. It is found that the cylindrical envelope lateral wall heat conduction can enhance the heat transfer from the hot end to the cold end, not only because of the increase in pure heat conduction in the wall, but more importantly, also the intensification of the natural convection within the enclosure. This enhancement is resulted from the big temperature difference between the tube wall and the adjacent fluid near the hot and cold ends. Adoption of low thermal conductivity tube can effectively reduce such additional heat transfers from hot to cold end, thus reducing the loss of cooling capacity for the pulse tube refrigerator.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the condensation process of hot vapor on smooth/rough walls and find how the condensation film forms and grows. The influences of the roughness and the wettability on condensation are especially analyzed.

The non‐equilibrium molecular dynamics simulation method is used to simulate the condensation. In order to maintain the process, a simple and effective molecule insertion mechanics is proposed.

The results show that the wall‐neighboring liquid structure becomes more regular with stronger wettability. The temporal parametric profiles show that the condensation does not progress at a constant rate but exhibit obvious unsteady characteristics of gradual deceleration, especially for strong wettability cases. Analysis based on heat and mass transfer indicates that the influence of wettability is quite superior to that of the roughness. The enhancement should be explained by the more fluent and effective energy exchange between solid and liquid particles caused by strong solid‐liquid coupling other than by the ordering structure itself.

The paper's findings suggest that the wettability should be paid special attention when the heat transfer performance of the microscale condensation is predominantly focused on.

The paper provides a vapor‐liquid‐solid model with molecule insertion. This model can be used to evaluate the contact thermal resistance and the thermal boundary conditions in condensation under different geometric conditions.