• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.40 no.7
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• pp.441-448
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• 2016

The thrust force created by a propeller depends on the incoming flow velocity and the rotational velocity of the propeller. The performance of the propeller can be described by dimensionless variables, advanced ratio, thrust coefficient, and power coefficient. This study included the application of the immersed boundary lattice Boltzmann method (IBLBM) with the stereo lithography (STL) file of the rotating object for performance analysis. The immersed boundary method included the addition of the external force term to the LB equation defined by the velocity difference between the lattice points of the propeller and the grid points in the domain. The flow by rotating a 4-blade propeller was simulated with various Reynolds numbers (Re) (including 100, 500 and 1000), with advanced ratios in the range of 0.2~1.4 to verify the suggested method. The typical tendency of the thrust efficiency of the propeller was obtained from the simulation results of different advanced ratios. It was also necessary to keep the maximum mesh size ratio of the propeller surface to a grid size below 3. Additionally, a sufficient length of the downstream region in the domain was maintained to ensure the numerical stability of the higher Re and advanced ratio flow.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.40 no.11
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• pp.689-695
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• 2016

The performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) is strongly related to the water flow and accumulation in the gas diffusion layer (GDL) and catalyst layer. Understanding the behavior of fluid from the characteristics of the media is crucial for the improvement of the performance and design of the GDL. In this paper, a numerical method is proposed to calculate the design parameters of the GDL, i.e., permeability, tortuosity, and effective diffusivity. The fluid flow in a channel filled with randomly packed hard spheres is simulated to validate the method. The flow simulation was performed by lattice Boltzmann method with bounce back condition for the solid volume fraction in the porous media, with different values of porosities. Permeability, which affects the flow, was calculated from the average pressure drop and the velocity in the porous media. Tortuosity, calculated by the ratio the average path length of the randomly injected massless particles to the thickness of the porous media, and the resultant effective diffusivity were in good agreement with the theoretical model. The suggested method can be used to calculate the parameters of real GDL accurately without any modification.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.7-13
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• 2011

A comparative analysis of thermal models in the lattice Boltzmann method(LBM) for the simulation of laminar natural convection in a square cavity is presented. A HYBRID method, in which the thermal equation is solved by the Navier-Stokes equation method while the mass and momentum conservation are resolved by the lattice Boltzmann method, is introduced and its merits are explained. All the governing equations are discretized on a cell-centered, non-uniform grid using the finite-volume method. The convection terms are treated by a second-order central-difference scheme with a deferred correction method to ensure stability of the solutions. The HYBRID method and the double-population method are applied to the simulation of natural convection in a square cavity and the predicted results are compared with the benchmark solutions given in the literatures. The predicted results are also compared with those by the conventional Navier-Stokes equation method. In general, the present HYBRID method is as accurate as the Navier-Stokes equation method and the double-population method. The HYBRID method shows better convergence and stability than the double-population method. These observations indicate that this HYBRID method is an efficient and economic method for the simulation of incompressible fluid flow and heat transfer problem with the LBM.