An application of the meshless Local Radial Basis Function Collocation Method (LRBFCM) [22, 30–33] in solution of incompressible turbulent combined forced and natural convection is for the first time explored in the present paper. The turbulent flow equations are described by the low-Re number $k − ε$ model with Launder and Sharma [23] and Abe et al. [1] closure coefficients. The involved temperature, velocity, pressure, turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation fields are represented on overlapping 5-noded sub-domains through the collocation by using multiquadrics Radial Basis Functions (RBF). The involved first and second order partial derivatives of the fields are calculated from the respective derivatives of the RBF's. The involved equations are solved through the explicit time stepping. The pressure-velocity coupling is based on Chorin's fractional step method [11]. The adaptive upwinding technique, proposed by Lin and Atluri [27], is used because of the convection dominated situation. The solution procedure is represented for a 2D upward channel flow with differentially heated walls. The results have been assessed by achieving a reasonable agreement with the direct numerical simulation of Kasagi and Nishimura [20] for Reynolds number 4494, based on the channel width, and Grashof number 9.6 × 10⁵. The advantages of the represented mesh-free approach are its simplicity, accuracy, similar coding in 2D and 3D, and straightforward applicability in non-uniform node arrangements.

Fluids engineering is extremely important in a wide variety of materials processing systems, such as soldering, welding, extrusion of plastics and other polymeric materials, Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), composite materials manufacturing. In particular, mixed convection due to moving surfaces is very important in these applications. Mixed convection in a channel, as a result of buoyancy and motion of one of its walls has received little research attention and few guidelines are available for choosing the best performing channel configuration, particularly when radiative effects are significant. In this study a numerical investigation of the effect of radiation on mixed convection in air due to the interaction between a buoyancy flow and an unheated moving plate induced flow in a uniformly heated convergent vertical channel is carried out. The moving plate has a constant velocity and moves in the buoyancy force direction. The principal walls of the channel are heated at uniform heat flux. The numerical analysis is accomplished by means of the commercial code Fluent. The effects of the wall emissivity, the minimum channel spacing, the converging angle and the moving plate velocity are investigated and results in terms of air velocity and temperature fields inside the channel and wall temperature profiles, both of the moving and the heated plates, are given. Nusselt numbers, both accounting and not for the radiative contribution to heat removal, are also presented.

Cooling methods are needed for turbine blade tips to ensure a long durability and safe operation. A common way to cool a tip is to use serpentine passages with 180-deg turn under the blade tip-cap taking advantage of the three-dimensional turning effect and impingement like flow. Improved internal convective cooling is therefore required to increase the blade tip lifetime. In the present study, augmented heat transfer of an internal blade tip with pin-fin arrays has been investigated numerically using a conjugate heat transfer method. The computational domain includes the fluid region and the solid pins as well as the tip regions. Turbulent convective heat transfer between the fluid and pins, and heat conduction within pins and tip are simultaneously computed. The main objective of the present study is to observe the effect of the pin material on heat transfer enhancement of the pin-finned tips. It is found that due to the combination of turning, impingement and pin-fin crossflow, the heat transfer coefficient of a pin-finned tip is a factor of 2.9 higher than that of a smooth tip at the cost of an increased pressure drop by less than 10%. The usage of metal pins can reduce the tip temperature effectively and thereby remove the heat load from the tip. Also, it is found that the tip heat transfer is enhanced even by using insulating pins having low thermal conductivity at low Reynolds numbers. The comparisons of overall performances are also included.

In the present paper a combined procedure for the quasi-dimensional modelling of heat transfer, combustion and knock phenomena in a "downsized" Spark Ignition two-cylinder turbocharged engine is presented. The procedure is extended to also include the effects consequent the Cyclic Variability. Heat transfer is modelled by means of a Finite Elements model. Combustion simulation is based on a fractal description of the flame front area. Cyclic Variability (CV) is characterized through the introduction of a random variation on a number of parameters controlling the rate of heat release (air/fuel ratio, initial flame kernel duration and radius, laminar flame speed, turbulence intensity). The intensity of the random variation is specified in order to realize a Coefficient Of Variation (COV) of the  Indicated Mean Effective Pressure (IMEP) similar to the one measured during an experimental campaign. Moreover, the relative importance of the various concurring effects is established on the overall COV. A kinetic scheme is then solved within the unburned gas zone, characterized by different thermodynamic conditions occurring cycle-by-cycle. In this way, an optimal choice of the "knock-limited" spark advance is effected and compared with experimental data. Finally, the CV effects on the occurrence of individual knocking cycles are assessed and discussed.

Modelling based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is by now effectively used in fire research and hazard analysis. Depending on the scenario, radiative heat transfer can play a very important role in enclosure combustion events such as tunnel fires. In this work, the importance of radiation and the effect of the use of different approaches to account for it were assessed. Firstly, small-scale tunnel fire simulations were performed and the results compared with experimental data, then realistic full-scale scenarios were simulated. The results show up the capability of CFD modelling to reproduce with good approximation tunnel fires. Radiation proved to be noteworthy mainly when the scale of the fire is relatively large. Among the various approaches employed to simulate radiation, the use of the Discrete Transfer model gave the most accurate results, mainly when the absorption-emission characteristics of the combustion products were taken into account. Finally, the suitability of the use of CFD in quantitative Fire Hazard Analysis is discussed.

Phase change in ice-water systems in the geometry of horizontal cylindrical annulus with constant inner wall temperature and adiabatic outer wall is modeled with an enthalpy-based mixture model. Solidification and melting phenomena under different temperature conditions are analyzed through a sequence of numerical calculations. In the case of freezing of water, the importance of convection and conduction as well as the influence of cold pipe temperature on time for the complete solidification is examined. As for the case of melting of ice, the influence of the inner pipe wall temperature on the shape of the ice-water interface, the flow and temperature fields in the liquid, the heat transfer coefficients and the rate of melting are analyzed. The results of numerical calculations point to good qualitative agreement with the available experimental and other numerical results.

In this work we introduce PRIN-3D (PRoto-code for Internal flows modeled by Navier-Stokes equations in 3-Dimensions), a new high level algebraic language (Matlab$^®$) based code, by discussing some fundamental aspects regarding its basic solving kernel and by describing the design of an innovative advection scheme. The main focus was on designing a memory and computationally efficient code that, due to the typical conciseness of the Matlab coding language, could allow for fast and effective implementation of new models or algorithms. Innovative numerical methods are discussed in the paper. The pressure equation is derived with a quasi-segregation technique leading to an iterative scheme obtained within the framework of a global preconditioning procedure. Different levels of parallelization are obtainable by exploiting special pressure variable ordering patterns that lead to a block-structured Poisson-like matrix. Moreover, the new advection scheme has the potential of a controllable artificial diffusivity. Preliminary results are shown including a fully three-dimensional internal laminar flow evolving in a relatively complex geometry and a 3D methane-air flame simulated with the aid of libraries based on the Flamelet model.