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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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Phase Diagram of the Two-Chain Hubbard Model

We have calculated the charge gap and spin gap for the two-chain Hubbard model as a function of the on-site Coulomb interaction and the interchain hopping amplitude. We used the density matrix renormalization group method and developed a method to calculate separately the gaps numerically for the symmetric and antisymmetric modes with respect to the exchange of the chain indices. We have found very different behaviors for the weak and strong interaction cases. Our calculated phase diagram is compared to the one obtained by Balents and Fisher using the weak coupling renormalization group technique.

Park, Youngho↗

Research activities at the Center for Modeling of Turbulence and Transition

The main research activities at the Center for Modeling of Turbulence and Transition (CMOTT) are described. The research objective of CMOTT is to improve and/or develop turbulence and transition models for propulsion systems. The flows of interest in propulsion systems can be both compressible and incompressible, three dimensional, bounded by complex wall geometries, chemically reacting, and involve 'bypass' transition. The most relevant turbulence and transition models for the above flows are one- and two-equation eddy viscosity models, Reynolds stress algebraic- and transport-equation models, pdf models, and multiple-scale models. All these models are classified as one-point closure schemes since only one-point (in time and space) turbulent correlations, such as second moments (Reynolds stresses and turbulent heat fluxes) and third moments, are involved. In computational fluid dynamics, all turbulent quantities are one-point correlations. Therefore, the study of one-point turbulent closure schemes is the focus of our turbulence research. However, other research, such as the renormalization group theory, the direct interaction approximation method, and numerical simulations are also pursued to support the development of turbulence modeling.

Shih, Tsan-Hsing↗

Center for modeling of turbulence and transition: Research briefs, 1993

This research brief contains the progress reports of the research staff of the Center for Modeling of Turbulence and Transition (CMOTT) from June 1992 to July 1993. It is also an annual report to the Institute for Computational Mechanics in Propulsion located at Ohio Aerospace Institute and NASA Lewis Research Center. The main objectives of the research activities at CMOTT are to develop, validate, and implement turbulence and transition models for flows of interest in propulsion systems. Currently, our research covers eddy viscosity one- and two-equation models, Reynolds-stress algebraic equation models, Reynolds-stress transport equation models, nonequilibrium multiple-scale models, bypass transition models, joint scalar probability density function models, and Renormalization Group Theory and Direct Interaction Approximation methods. Some numerical simulations (LES and DNS) have also been carried out to support the development of turbulence modeling. Last year was CMOTT's third year in operation. During this period, in addition to the above mentioned research, CMOTT has also hosted the following programs: an eighteen-hour short course on 'Turbulence--Fundamentals and Computational Modeling (Part I)' given by CMOTT at the NASA Lewis Research Center; a productive summer visitor research program that has generated many encouraging results; collaborative programs with industry customers to help improve their turbulent flow calculations for propulsion system designs; a biweekly CMOTT seminar series with speakers from within and without the NASA Lewis Research Center including foreign speakers. In addition, CMOTT members have been actively involved in the national and international turbulence research activities. The current CMOTT roster and organization are listed in Appendix A. Listed in Appendix B are the abstracts of the biweekly CMOTT seminar. Appendix C lists the papers contributed by CMOTT members.

Liou, William W.↗

Theory of droplet. Part 1: Renormalized laws of droplet vaporization in non-dilute sprays

The vaporization of a droplet, interacting with its neighbors in a non-dilute spray environment is examined as well as a vaporization scaling law established on the basis of a recently developed theory of renormalized droplet. The interacting droplet consists of a centrally located droplet and its vapor bubble which is surrounded by a cloud of droplets. The distribution of the droplets and the size of the cloud are characterized by a pair-distribution function. The vaporization of a droplet is retarded by the collective thermal quenching, the vapor concentration accumulated in the outer sphere, and by the limited percolative passages for mass, momentum and energy fluxes. The retardation is scaled by the local collective interaction parameters (group combustion number of renormalized droplet, droplet spacing, renormalization number and local ambient conditions). The numerical results of a selected case study reveal that the vaporization correction factor falls from unity monotonically as the group combustion number increases, and saturation is likely to occur when the group combustion number reaches 35 to 40 with interdroplet spacing of 7.5 diameters and an environment temperature of 500 K. The scaling law suggests that dense sprays can be classified into: (1) a diffusively dense cloud characterized by uniform thermal quenching in the cloud; (2) a stratified dense cloud characterized by a radial stratification in temperature by the differential thermal quenching of the cloud; or (3) a sharply dense cloud marked by fine structure in the quasi-droplet cloud and the corresponding variation in the correction factor due to the variation in the topological structure of the cloud characterized by a pair-distribution function of quasi-droplets.

Chiu, H. H.↗

Center for Modeling of Turbulence and Transition (CMOTT): Research Briefs, 1992

The progress is reported of the Center for Modeling of Turbulence and Transition (CMOTT). The main objective of the CMOTT is to develop, validate and implement the turbulence and transition models for practical engineering flows. The flows of interest are three-dimensional, incompressible and compressible flows with chemical reaction. The research covers two-equation (e.g., k-e) and algebraic Reynolds-stress models, second moment closure models, probability density function (pdf) models, Renormalization Group Theory (RNG), Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS).

Liou, William W.↗

Center for Modeling of Turbulence and Transition (CMOTT). Research briefs: 1990

Brief progress reports of the Center for Modeling of Turbulence and Transition (CMOTT) research staff from May 1990 to May 1991 are given. The objectives of the CMOTT are to develop, validate, and implement the models for turbulence and boundary layer transition in the practical engineering flows. The flows of interest are three dimensional, incompressible, and compressible flows with chemistry. The schemes being studied include the two-equation and algebraic Reynolds stress models, the full Reynolds stress (or second moment closure) models, the probability density function models, the Renormalization Group Theory (RNG) and Interaction Approximation (DIA), the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS).

Povinelli, Louis A.↗

Complexity and Intermittent Turbulence in Space Plasmas

Sporadic and localized interactions of coherent structures arising from plasma resonances can be the origin of "complexity" of the coexistence of non- propagating spatiotemporal fluctuations and propagating modes in space plasmas. Numerical simulation results are presented to demonstrate the intermittent character of the non-propagating fluctuations. The technique of the dynamic renormalization-group is introduced and applied to the study of scale invariance of such type of multiscale fluctuations. We also demonstrate that the particle interactions with the intermittent turbulence can lead to the efficient energization of the plasma populations. An example related to the ion acceleration processes in the auroral zone is provided.

Chang, Tom↗

Turbulent viscosity

A model for fully developed turbulence is proposed whose predictions compare favorably with those of the direct interaction approximation (DIA) model and whose main equations are easy to handle. Four different expressions for the turbulent viscosity are derived which contain no free parameters. Two of the expressions are given in terms of properties of the turbulent fluid itself; the other two are given in terms of the instability that generated the turbulence and of the properties of the mean flow. The numerical coefficients entering these relations are evaluated and found to be in good agreement with previous theoretical estimates based on Kraichnan's DIA, the renormalization group method, and turbulence modeling. In the case of shear in the mean flow, the Shakura-Sunyaev alpha parameter is shown to be less than 0.01. The four expressions can be generalized to include the effect of rotation and/or magnetic fields.

Canuto, V. M.↗

Complexity Induced Anisotropic Bimodal Intermittent Turbulence in Space Plasmas

The "physics of complexity" in space plasmas is the central theme of this exposition. It is demonstrated that the sporadic and localized interactions of magnetic coherent structures arising from the plasma resonances can be the source for the coexistence of nonpropagating spatiotemporal fluctuations and propagating modes. Non-Gaussian probability distribution functions of the intermittent fluctuations from direct numerical simulations are obtained and discussed. Power spectra and local intermittency measures using the wavelet analyses are presented to display the spottiness of the small-scale turbulent fluctuations and the non-uniformity of coarse-grained dissipation that can lead to magnetic topological reconfigurations. The technique of the dynamic renormalization group is applied to the study of the scaling properties of such type of multiscale fluctuations. Charged particle interactions with both the propagating and nonpropagating portions of the intermittent turbulence are also described.

Chang, Tom↗

Evaluation of Turbulence Models for Unsteady Flows of an Oscillating Airfoil

Unsteady flowfields of a two-dimensional oscillating airfoil are calculated using an implicit, finite-difference, Navier Stokes numerical scheme. Five widely used turbulence models are used with the numerical scheme to assess the accuracy and suitability of the models for simulating the retreating blade stall of helicopter rotor in forward flight. Three unsteady flow conditions corresponding to an essentially attached flow, light-stall, and deep-stall cases of an oscillating NACA 0015 wing experiment were chosen as test cases for computations. Results of unsteady airloads hysteresis curves, harmonics of unsteady pressures, and instantaneous flowfield patterns are presented. Some effects of grid density, time-step size, and numerical dissipation on the unsteady solutions relevant to the evaluation of turbulence models are examined. Comparison of unsteady airloads with experimental data show that all models tested are deficient in some sense and no single model predicts airloads consistently and in agreement with experiment for the three flow regimes. The chief findings are that the simple algebraic model based on the renormalization group theory (RNG) offers some improvement over the Baldwin Lomax model in all flow regimes with nearly same computational cost. The one-equation models provide significant improvement over the algebraic and the half-equation models but have their own limitations. The Baldwin-Barth model overpredicts separation and underpredicts reattachment. In contrast, the Spalart-Allmaras model underpredicts separation and overpredicts reattachment.

Srinivasan, G. R.↗

Dynamic stall of an oscillating wing. Part 1: Evaluation of turbulence models

Unsteady flowfields of a two-dimensional oscillating wing are calculated using an implicit, finite-difference, Navier-Stokes numerical scheme using five widely used turbulence models. The objective of this study is to identify an appropriate turbulence model for accurate simulation of three-dimensional dynamic stall. Three unsteady flow conditions corresponding to attached flow, light-stall, and deep-stall of an oscillating wing experiment were chosen as test cases for computations. Results of unsteady airload hysteresis curves, harmonics of unsteady pressures, and instantaneous flow pictures are presented. Comparison of unsteady airloads with experiment show that all models are deficient in some sense and not a single model predicts all airloads consistently and in agreement with experiment for all flow conditions. For the attached flow condition, the Renormalization Group Theory (RNG), the Johnoson-King (J-K), and the Spalart-Allmaras (S-A) models have better performance. The Baldwin-Lomax (B-L) and the Baldwin-Barth (B-B) models fair poorly. At the light-stall condition, the results for the RNG, the J-K, and S-A models are in agreement with experiment for the upstroke but they all over predict the separation shown by the experiment and therefore have bigger hysteresis loops than experimental results. The B-B model results are also in good agreement for upstroke but have poor lift hysteresis for downstroke. It has superior drag and pitching-moment predictions. For deep-stall conditions, the airloads for the RNG, the B -B, and the S-A models have fair agreement with experiment, but the B-B model performed better at the extreme deep-stall condition. Overall, the RNG model provides significant improvement over the B-L model in all flow regimes with no additional computational cost. The Baldwin-Barth model is the most expensive of the models considered here, costing about 2.5 times that of the Baldwin-Lomax model. Finally, a brief discussion of the effects of grid density, time-step size, and numerical dissipation on the unsteady solutions are also presented.

Srinivasan, G. R.↗

Turbulence modeling

The performance of existing two-equation eddy viscosity models was examined. An effort was made to develop better models for near-wall turbulence using direct numerical simulations of plane channel and boundary layer flows. The asymptotic near-wall behavior of turbulence was used to examine the problems of current second order closure models and develop new models with the correct near-wall behavior. Rapid Distortion Theory was used to analytically study the effects of mean deformation on turbulence, obtain analytical solutions for the spectrum tensor, Reynolds stress tensor, anisotropy tensor and its invariants, which can be used in the turbulence model development. The potential of the renormalization group theory in turbulence modeling was studied, as well as compressible turbulent flows, and modeling of bypass transition.

Shih, Tsan-Hsing↗

RNG in turbulence and modeling of bypass transition

Two projects are considered: the Renormalization Group (RNG) analysis of turbulence modeling, and the calculation of bypass transition through turbulence modeling. RNG is a process which eliminates small scales on the uneliminated large scales as the change in the transport properties. It is because of this property of RNG that it was previously suggested that RNG could be used as a model builder in turbulence modeling. The possibility is studied of constructing RNG based turbulence models, and to try to proceed to do the modeling through RNG in parallel with the classical approach. The numerical predictions made by RNG models and by classical models is compared against data from Direct Numerical Simulation. While in an environment with freestream turbulence, the transition initiated by the instability of the laminar boundary layer to Tollmien-Schlichting waves is found to be a bypass one in which turbulent spots are formed without T-S wave amplification. The formation is a random process, and flow within a turbulent spot is almost fully turbulent. This suggests the possibility of using turbulence modeling to describe and predict the bypass transition.

Yang, Zhigang↗

Renormalization group analysis of anisotropic diffusion in turbulent shear flows

The renormalization group is applied to compute anisotropic corrections to the scalar eddy diffusivity representation of turbulent diffusion of a passive scalar. The corrections are linear in the mean velocity gradients. All model constants are computed theoretically. A form of the theory valid at arbitrary Reynolds number is derived. The theory applies only when convection of the velocity-scalar correlation can be neglected. A ratio of diffusivity components, found experimentally to have a nearly constant value in a variety of shear flows, is computed theoretically for flows in a certain state of equilibrium. The theoretical value is well within the fairly narrow range of experimentally observed values. Theoretical predictions of this diffusivity ratio are also compared with data from experiments and direct numerical simulations of homogeneous shear flows with constant velocity and scalar gradients.

Rubinstein, Robert↗