• 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.39-46
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• 2011

A numerical study of a turbulent natural convection in an enclosure with the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is presented. The primary emphasis of the present study is placed on investigation of accuracy and numerical stability of the LBM for the turbulent natural convection flow. A HYBRID method in which the thermal equation is solved by the conventional Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equation method while the conservation of mass and momentum equations are resolved by the LBM is employed in the present study. The elliptic-relaxation model is employed for the turbulence model and the turbulent heat fluxes are treated by the algebraic flux model. 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 the deferred correction way to ensure accuracy and stability of solutions. The present LBM is applied to the prediction of a turbulent natural convection in a rectangular cavity and the computed results are compared with the experimental data commonly used for the validation of turbulence models and those by the conventional finite-volume method. It is shown that the LBM with the present HYBRID thermal model predicts the mean velocity components and turbulent quantities which are as good as those by the conventional finite-volume method. It is also found that the accuracy and stability of the solution is significantly affected by the treatment of the convection term, especially near the wall.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.397-403
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• 2007

Insect and birds in nature flap their wings to generate fluid dynamic forces that are required for locomotion. To develop a feasible flapping MAV, it is of crucially important to study the fundamental relations between flapping motion and thrust generation. In this paper, the onset conditions of the thrust generation of a heaving flat plate is investigated using a Lattice-Boltzmann method. For a fixed heaving amplitude of h/C=0.5, the effect of reduced frequency on the thrust generation is investigated. For several values of heaving amplitude(h/C=0.25, 0.325, 0.50), the effect of reduced frequency on the thrust generation is also investigated. It can be said that Strouhal number is more important rather than reduced frequency in case of thrust generation. It is found that the critical Strouhal number over which the flat plate starts to produce thrust is around 0.1. Thrust is an exponential function of the Strouhal number.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.169-178
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• 2011

The dispersion of a pollutant in a turbulent boundary layer has been described in this study by using a two-dimensional lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and the Smagorinsky sub-grid-scale (SGS) model. The scalar transport equation corresponding to the pollutant concentration is adopted; the pollutant is considered to be in a continuous phase. The pollutant source is classified as ground-level source (GLS) and elevated-point source (ES). Air velocity and particle concentration profile for the pollutant are compared with the respective results and profiles obtained in the experiments of Fackrell and Robins (1982) and Raupach and Legg (1983). The numerical results obtained in this study, i.e., the simulation and the experimental data for the mean flow velocity profiles and the pollutant concentration profiles, are in good agreement with each other.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.347-355
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• 2016

This study presents a Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) coupled with a momentum-exchange approach/fictitious domain (MEA/FD) method for the simulation of particle suspensions. The method combines the advantages of the LB and the FD methods by using two unrelated meshes, namely, a Eulerian mesh for the flow domain and a Lagrangian mesh for the solid domain. The rigid body conditions are enforced by the momentum-exchange scheme in which the desired value of velocity is imposed directly in the particle inner domain by introducing a pseudo body force to satisfy the constraint of rigid body motion, which is the key idea of a fictitious domain (FD) method. The LB-MEA/FD method has been validated by simulating two different cases, and the results have been compared with those through other methods. The numerical evidence illustrated the capability and robustness of the present method for simulating particle suspensions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.683-693
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• 2013

In this study, the mixing characteristics in lid-driven cavity flows were studied numerically by using a hybrid lattice Boltzmann method (HLBM). First, we compared the numerical results from single-relaxation-time (LB-SRT) and multi-relaxation-time (LB-MRT) models to examine their reliability. In most of the cavity flow, the results from both the LB-SRT and the LB-MRT models were in good agreement with those using a Navier-Stokes solver for Re=100-5000. However, the LB-MRT model was superior to the LB-SRT model for the simulation of higher Reynolds number flows having a geometrical singularity with much lesser spatial oscillations. For this reason, the LB-MRT model was selected to study the mass transport in lid-driven cavity flows, and it was demonstrated that mass transport in the fluid was activated by a recirculation zone in the cavity, which is connected from the top to the bottom surfaces through two boundary layers. Various mixing characteristics such as the concentration profiles, mean Sherwood (Sh) numbers, and velocity were computed. Finally, the detailed transport mechanism and solutions for the concentration profile in the cavity were presented.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.591-597
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• 2013

Because most existing non-Newtonian models are not suitable for application to the lattice Boltzmann method, theoretical and numerical studies in this regard remain challenging. In this study, the hydrokinetic (HK) model was modified and applied to a 3D sudden contraction-expansion channel flow, and the characteristics of the HK model flow were evaluated to generate non-trivial predictions in three-dimensional strong shear flows. The HK model is very efficient for application to the lattice Boltzmann method because it utilizes the shear rate and relaxation time. However, the simulation would be unstable in a high shear flow field because the local relaxation time sharply decreases with an increase in the shear rate in a strong shear flow field. In the HK model, it may become necessary to truncate the relaxation time and non-dimensional parameter to obtain stable numerical results.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.32 no.12
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• pp.924-930
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• 2008

Immersed boundary method (IBM) is the most effective method to overcome the disadvantage of LBM (Lattice Boltzmann Method) related to the limitation of the grid shape. IBM also make LBM possible to simulate flow over complex shape of obstacle without any treatment on the curved boundary. In the research, IBLBM was used to perform LBM simulation of a flow over a moving circular cylinder to determine the flow feature and aerodynamics characteristic of the cylinder. To ascertain the applicability of IBLBM on the moving obstacle near the wall, it was first simulated for the case of the flow over a fixed circular cylinder in a channel and the results were compared against the solution of moving cylinder in the channel using IBLBM. The simulations were performed in a moderate range of Reynolds number at each moving cylinder to identify the flow feature and aerodynamic characteristics of circular cylinder in a channel. The drag and lift coefficients of the cylinder were calculated from the simulation results. We have numerically confirmed that the critical Reynolds number for vortex shedding is Re=50 and the result is the same as the case of fixed cylinder. As the cylinder approaching to a wall (${\gamma}<2.5$), the 2nd vortex is developed by interacting with the wall boundary-layer vorticity. When the cylinder is very closed to the wall, ${\gamma}<0.6$, the cylinder acts like blockage to block the flow between the cylinder and wall so that the vortex developed on the upper cylinder elongated and time averaged lifting and drag coefficients abruptly increase.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.26-37
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• 2023

Urban air mobility (UAM) is being developed as part of the next-generation aircraft, which could be a viable solution to entrenched problems of urban traffic congestion and environmental pollution. A new airport platform called vertiport as a space where UAM can take off and land vertically is also being introduced. Noise regulations for UAM will be strict due to its operation in a highly populated urban area. Ground effects caused by vertiport can directly affect aerodynamic forces and noise characteristics of UAM. In this study, ground effects of vertiport on aerodynamic loads, vorticity field, and far-field noise were analyzed using Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM) simulation and Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings (FW-H) acoustic analogy with a permeable surface method.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.44.2-44.2
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• 2005