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Growing application of micro aerial vehicle (MAV) sets in demand for accurate computations of low Reynolds number flows past their wings. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of unsteady freestream velocity or wind gust on a harmonically plunging symmetric NACA0012 airfoil at Re = 1,000. The influence of unsteady parameters, such as reduced frequency of plunging motion (0.25 < k < 1.5), non-dimensional plunging amplitude (h_o = 0.2) and non-dimensional amplitude of wind gust (0.1 = λ = 0.4) has been studied.

Computations have been carried out using commercial software ANSYS Fluent 16.0. To incorporate the plunging motion, the entire reference frame is oscillating, and thereby, a source term is added in the Navier–Stokes equation.

The results have been presented in the form of streamlines, vorticity contours, lift and drag signals and their spectra. It is observed that the ratio of plunging frequency to gust frequency (f/f_g) has strong influence on periodic characteristics of unsteady wake. It has also been observed that for a fixed plunging amplitude, an increase in value of k results into a change from positive drag to thrust.

The research has implications in the development of MAV.

This study is intended to get a better understanding of unsteady parameters associated with gusty flow in flapping wing applications and possible ways to alleviate its adverse effect on it.

This study aims to explore an active control strategy for attenuation of in-line and transverse flow-induced vibration (FIV) of two tandem-arranged circular cylinders.

The control system is based on the rotary oscillation of cylinders around their axis, which acts according to the lift coefficient feedback signal. The fluid-solid interaction simulations are performed for two velocity ratios (V_r = 5.5 and 7.5), three spacing ratios (L/D = 3.5, 5.5 and 7.5) and three different control cases. Cases 1 and 2, respectively, deal with the effect of rotary oscillation of front and rear cylinders, while Case 3 considers the effect of applied rotary oscillation to both cylinders.

The results show that in Case 3, the FIV of both cylinders is perfectly reduced, while in Case 2, only the vibration of rear cylinder is mitigated and no change is observed in the vortex-induced vibration of front cylinder. In Case 1, by rotary oscillation of the front cylinder, depending on the reduced velocity and the spacing ratio values, the transverse oscillation amplitude of the rear cylinder suppresses, remains unchanged and even increases under certain conditions. Hence, at every spacing ratio and reduced velocity, an independent controller system for each cylinder is necessary to guarantee a perfect vibration reduction of front and rear cylinders.

The current manuscript seeks to deploy a type of active rotary oscillating (ARO) controller to attenuate the FIV of two tandem-arranged cylinders placed on elastic supports. Three different cases are considered so as to understand the interaction of these cylinders regarding the rotary oscillation.

The purpose of this paper is to study the combustion and emission characteristics of an improved trapped vortex combustor (TVC).

An experiment is carried out to study the effect of the bluff bodies’ layout on the flow of the improved TVC. Results confirm that an equation achieving the proper cavity size of a TVC can be used to design the reasonable configuration of the improved TVC. A numerical simulation is used to study the flow, combustion and emission characteristics of the improved TVC.

The flow resistance, the vortex configuration, the combustion efficiency and the emissions of the improved TVC are influenced by the equivalence ratio of the main flow, the position and the flow injection angle in the cavity.

The investigation on the lean-premixed combustion of the improved TVC will provide a theory basis for the design of the improved TVC.

The improved TVC will be used in the gas turbines burning synfuels. There are the implications which offer an opportunity to avoid use of diluent gas to reduce the flame temperatures of the combustion in the gas turbines burning synfuels.

The improved TVC with the reasonable layout of the bluff bodies provides a method implementing lean-premixed combustion in the gas turbines burning synfuels.

The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively evaluate the progress in the development of trapped vortex combustors (TVCs) in the past three decades. The review aims to identify the needs, predict the scope and discuss the challenges of numerical simulations in TVCs applied to gas turbines.

TVC is an emerging combustion technology for achieving low emissions in gas turbine combustors. The overall operation of such TVCs can be on very lean mixture ratio and hence it helps in achieving high combustion efficiency and low overall emission levels. This review introduces the TVC concept and the evolution of this technology in the past three decades. Various geometries that were explored in TVC research are listed and their operating principles are explained. The review then categorically arranges the progress in computational studies applied to TVCs.

Analyzing extensive literature on TVCs the review discusses results of numerical simulations of various TVC geometries. Numerical simulations that were used to optimize TVC geometry and to enhance mixing are discussed. Reactive flow studies to comprehend flame stability and emission characteristics are then listed for different TVC geometries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this review is the first of its kind to discuss extensively the computational progress in TVC development specific to gas turbine engines. Earlier review on TVC covers a wide variety of applications including land-based gas turbines, supersonic Ramjets, incinerators and hence compromise on the depth of analysis given to gas turbine engine applications. This review also comprehensively group the numerical studies based on geometry, flow and operating conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a partitioned approach by coupling the smoothed profile method (SPM) and the Euler tension beam model in simulating a vortex-induced vibration of both rigid and flexible cylinders at various reduced velocities.

For the fluid part, SPM in the framework of the spectral element method is adopted to simulate the flow. The advantage of SPM lies in modelling multiple complex shapes as it uses a fixed computational mesh without conformation to the geometry of the particles. For the structure part, an elastic-mounted rigid cylinder is considered in two-dimensional (2D) simulations, while a flexible cylinder with a Euler tension beam model is used in three-dimensional simulations.

Firstly, in the flow past a freely vibrating cylinder, the maximum vibration responses of the cylinder are about 0.73D and 0.1D in the y and x directions, respectively, which occur at the point U_r = 5.75 and are much higher than U_r = 5 in 2D simulations. It is found that the numerical results from the SPM solver are very consistent with those from the NEKTAR-Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian method (NEKTAR-ALE) solver or the NEKTAR-Fourier solver. Furthermore, the flow past the tandem cylinders is also investigated, where the upstream cylinder is static while the downstream one is free to vibrate. Specifically, the beating behaviour is captured from the vibration response of the freely vibrating cylinder under the reduced velocity of U_r = 6 with a gap distance of L = 3.5D.

The originality of the paper lies in coupling the SEM with the Euler beam model in simulating the vortex induced vibration (VIV) of flexible cylinders.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel method to study the flutter coupling mechanism of the twin-fuselage aircraft, which is becoming a popular transportation vehicle recently.

A new method of flutter mode indicator is proposed based on the principle of work and power, which is realized through energy accumulation of generalized force work on generalized coordinates, based on which flutter coupling mechanism of the twin-fuselage aircraft is studied using ground vibration test and computational fluid dynamics/computational solid dynamics method.

Verification of the proposed flutter mode indicator is provided, by which the flutter mechanism of the twin fuselage is found as the horizontal tail’s torsion coupled with its bending effect and the “frequency drifting” phenomenon of twin-fuselage aircraft is explained logically, highlighting the proposed method in this paper.

This paper proposed a new method of flutter mode indicator, which has advantages in flutter modes indexes reliability, clear physical meaning and results normalization. This study found the flutter coupling mechanism of twin-fuselage aircraft, which has important guiding significance to the development of twin-fuselage aircraft.

In this study, for the first time, the efficacy of control rods for full suppression of vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) and galloping of an elastically supported rigid square cylinder that vibrates freely in the cross-flow direction is investigated.

To this aim, two small control rods are placed at constant angles of ± 45° relative to the horizontal axis and then the influence of diameter and spacing ratios on the oscillation and hydrodynamic response along with the vortex structure behind the cylinder is evaluated in the form of nine different cases in both VIV and galloping regions.

The performed simulations show that using the configuration presented in this study results in full VIV suppression for the spacing ratios G/D = 0.5, 1 and 1.5 at the diameter ratios d/D = 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 (D: diameter of square cylinder, G: distance between rods and cylinder, d: diameter of rods). On the contrary, a perfect attenuation of galloping is only achieved at the largest diameter (d/D = 0.3) and the smallest spacing ratio (G/D = 0.5). In general, for both VIV and galloping regions, with increasing diameter ratio and decreasing spacing ratio, the effect of the control rods wake in the vortex street of square cylinder gradually increases. This trend carries on to the point where the vortex shedding is completely suppressed and only the symmetric wake of control rods is observed.

So far, the effect of rod control on VIV of a square cylinder and its amplitude of oscillations has not been investigated.

The paper aims to study the influence of rounded corners on the flow-induced oscillation of a square cylinder that is free to oscillate in two degrees of freedom.

The finite volume code in conjunction with the moving mesh scheme was implemented via a user-defined function to carry out the computations in two dimensions. The Reynolds number (Re) chosen for the present study is fixed at 100, and the frequency ratio, F_r = f_s/f_n (where f_s is the vortex shedding frequency and f_n is the natural frequency of cylinder) is used as a varying parameter. The computational model was validated for flow past a stationary cylinder with R/D = 0 and 0.5, and the results showed good agreement with the literature.

The aerodynamic characteristics, amplitude response, trajectories of cylinder motion and vortex shedding modes are obtained by conducting a series of simulations under different frequency ratios of the cylinder. It was found that the minimum transverse amplitude, drag force and lift force obtained for a naturally oscillating square cylinder are quite different when compared with a stationary and forced oscillating cylinder, where the maximum drag and lift forces were observed for a square cylinder and a minimum around R/D = 0.2 was observed.

The present work identified the significant effect of the varying frequency ratio and R/D on the VIV modes of the cylinder. It was observed that the cylinder wake exhibits the (2S) vortex shedding mode for R/D = 0 to 0.2 at all F_r, whereas the C (2S) mode appeared for R/D > 0.2 at F_r = 1.1.