Mechanical Engineering Masters Theses Collection

Thermodynamic Analysis of a Combined Cycle District Heating System

Suresh, Sharan — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:53:18 PST

Power plant performance can be assessed by the method of thermodynamic analysis. The goal of this thesis is to perform a thermodynamic analysis on the University of Massachusetts’ Combined Heat and Power (CHP) District Heating System. Energy and exergy analyses are performed based on the first and second laws of thermodynamics for power generation systems that include a 10-MW Solar combustion gas turbine, a 4-MW low pressure steam turbine, a 2-MW high pressure steam turbine, a 100,000 pph heat recovery steam generator (HRSG), three 125,000 pph package boilers, and auxiliary equipment. The University of Massachusetts’ CHP plant delivers all of the campus’ steam and nearly all its electricity to the more than 200 buildings and nearly 10 million gross square feet of building space.

Two 20-inch main steam transmission lines connect the plant to the campus. On an annual basis the plant generates approximately 1,100,000,000 pounds of steam and 100,000,000 kWh of electric power. The plant has a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system. Rockwell Automation’s RSLinx OPC (Object Linking and Embedding for Process Control) server acquires data from up to 675 field instruments in the plant which is used for carrying out the analyses. The latest pollution control technologies, including advanced combustion turbine low NOx burners, advanced Selective Catalytic Reduction and Oxidation Catalyst pollution control technologies are employed in the plant.

System efficiencies are calculated for a wide range of component operating loads. Factors affecting efficiency of the CHP district heating system are analyzed. In the analysis, actual system data is used to assess the district heating system performance, energy and exergy efficiencies and exergy losses. Energy and exergy calculations are conducted for the whole year on an hourly basis. Factors affecting efficiency of the CHP district heating system are analyzed and recommendations made to improve the operating efficiency. The results show how thermodynamic analysis can be used to identify the magnitudes and location of energy losses in order to improve the existing system, processes or components.

Vibration Reduction of Offshore Wind Turbines Using Tuned Liquid Column Dampers

Roderick, Colin — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:52:13 PST

Offshore wind turbines (OWTs) are becoming an accepted method for generating electricity. The environmental conditions of offshore locations often impose high wind and wave forces on OWTs making them susceptible to intense loading and undesirable vibrations. One method to reduce system vibrations is through the use of structural control devices typically utilized in civil structures. Tuned liquid column dampers (TLCDs) show great promise in the application to OWTs due to their high performance and low cost. This thesis examines the use of TLCDs in OWTs.

Equations of motion for limited degree-of-freedom TLCD-turbine models are presented. A baseline analysis of each OWT is performed to generate a quantitative comparison to show how a TLCD would affect the overall dynamics of the system. The models are then subjected to two methods of testing. Optimal TLCD dimensions are derived for the models using a deterministic sweep method. The TLCD configurations examined include those with a uniform and non-uniform column cross-sectional area. The TLCD is shown to successfully reduce overall tower top displacement of each of the OWTs as well as the platform pitch when applicable. In some cases, use of the TLCD actually increases overall tower and platform motion.

This thesis also examines the use of idealized tuned mass dampers (TMDs) in OWTs. Comparisons between the optimized TLCD and the idealized TMD are made with regards to motion reduction and parameter values.

A Nonlinear Model for Wind-Induced Oscillations of Trees

Ramanujam, Lakshmi Narayanan — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:37:05 PST

Ambient wind causes trees to oscillate. Wind-induced oscillations of trees constitute a fluid-structure interaction problem, which has been studied by many researchers from various points of view. However, there is yet a lot to be done. From an engineering point of view, the complex structure of trees, which are very different from man-made structures, as well as the highly nonlinear interaction between wind and tree, makes it a challenging task to predict the amplitude and frequency of the resulting oscillations. From a biological point of view, the influence of wind on photosynthesis as well as the growth and death of plants is crucial. A nonlinear model is derived for wind-induced oscillations of trees to investigate the effect of structural nonlinearities. It is shown that the structural nonlinearities in the system can result in a hardening behavior of the tree, indicating the importance of taking such nonlinearities into account. The influence of various system parameters such as tree’s age, taper and slenderness ratio on the tree oscillations is studied using this nonlinear model.

High Speed Flow Simulation in Fuel Injector Nozzles

Rakshit, Sukanta — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:36:59 PST

Atomization of fuel is essential in controlling combustion inside a direct injection engine. Controlling combustion helps in reducing emissions and boosting efficiency. Cavitation is one of the factors that significantly affect the nature of spray in a combustion chamber. Typical fuel injector nozzles are small and operate at a very high pressure, which limit the study of internal nozzle behavior. The time and length scales further limit the experimental study of a fuel injector nozzle. Simulating cavitation in a fuel injector will help in understanding the phenomenon and will assist in further development.

The construction of any simulation of cavitating injector nozzles begins with the fundamental assumptions of which phenomena will be included and which will be neglected. To date, there has been no consensus about whether it is acceptable to assume that small, high-speed cavitating nozzles are in thermal or inertial equilibrium. This diversity of opinions leads to a variety of modeling approaches. If one assumes that the nozzle is in thermal equilibrium, then there is presumably no significant delay in bubble growth or collapse due to heat transfer. Heat transfer is infinitely fast and inertial effects limit phase change. The assumption of inertial equilibrium means that the two phases have negligible slip velocity. Alternatively, on the sub-grid scale level, one may also consider the possibility of small bubbles whose size responds to changes in pressure. Schmidt et al. developed a two dimensional transient homogeneous equilibrium model which was intended for simulating a small, high speed nozzle flows. The HEM uses the assumption of thermal equilibrium to simulate cavitation. It assumes the two-phase flow inside a nozzle in homogeneous mixture of vapor and liquid. This work presents the simulation of high-speed nozzle, using the HEM for cavitation, in a multidimensional and parallel framework. The model is extended to simulate the non-linear effects of the pure phase in the flow and the numerical approach is modified to achieve stable result in multidimensional framework.

Two-dimensional validations have been presented with simulation of a venturi nozzle, a sharp nozzle and a throttle from Winklhofer et al. Three-dimensional validations have been presented with simulation of ‘spray A’ and ‘spray H’ injectors from the Engine Combustion Network. The simulated results show that equilibrium assumptions are sufficient to predict the mass flow rate and cavitation incidence in small, high-speed nozzle flows.

Effect of Slip on Flow Past Superhydrophobic Cylinders

Muralidhar, Pranesh — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:33:27 PST

Superhydrophobic surfaces are a class of surfaces that have a microscale roughness imposed on an already hydrophobic surface, akin to a lotus leaf. These surfaces have been shown to produce significant drag reduction for both laminar and turbulent flows of water through large and small-scale channels. The goal of this thesis was to explore how these surfaces alter the vortex shedding dynamics of a cylindrical body when coated on its surface, thus leading to an alteration in drag and lift on these surfaces. A cylindrical body was chosen as it is a very nice representative bluff body and sets the stage for predicting the behavior of hydrofoils and other bluff bodies under flow with a slip boundary condition. In this work, a series of experiments were performed which investigated the effect of superhydrophobic-induced slip on the flow past a circular cylinder. In these experiments, circular cylinders were coated with a series of superhydrophobic surfaces fabricated from PDMS with well-defined micron-sized patterns of surface roughness or random slip surfaces fabricated by sanding Teflon cylinders or spray painting superhydrophobic paint on a smooth cylinder. The presence of the superhydrophobic surface was found to have a significant effect on the vortex shedding dynamics in the wake of the circular cylinder. When compared to a smooth, no-slip cylinder, cylinders coated with superhydrophobic surfaces were found to delay the onset of vortex shedding and increase the length of the recirculation region in the wake of the cylinder. For superhydrophobic surfaces with ridges aligned in the flow direction the separation point was found to move further upstream towards the front stagnation point of the cylinder and the vortex shedding frequency was found to increase. For superhydrophobic surfaces with ridges running normal to the flow direction, the separation point and shedding frequency trends were reversed. The vortices shed from these surfaces were found to be weaker and less interlaced leading to reduced circulation and lift forces on these cylinders. The effect of slip on bluff bodies and separating flow was dealt with in detail in this thesis and the results could be used to predict the impact of these surfaces on the flow past hydrofoils which combine skin friction dominated flow with separating flow.

Experimental Study of Stability Limits for Slender Wind Turbine Blades

Ladge, Shruti — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:24:04 PST

There is a growing interest in extracting more power per turbine by increasing the rotor size in offshore wind turbines. As a result, the turbine blades will become longer and therefore more flexible and a flexible blade is susceptible to flow-induced instabilities, such as classical flutter. In order to design and build stable large wind turbine blades, the onset of instability should be considered in the design process. To observe flow-induced instabilities in wind turbine blades, a small-scale flexible blade was built based on NREL 5MW reference wind turbine blade. The blade was placed in the test section of a wind tunnel and its tip displacement was measured using a non-contacting displacement measurement device. The blade was non-rotating and was subjected to uniform incoming flow. For a range of blade angles of attack, instability was observed beyond a critical wind speed. The amplitude of oscillations increases for wind speeds higher than the critical speed, and the frequency of oscillations remains constant. Flow visualizations and force measurements are conducted and the influence of various system parameters including the angle of attack and the blade twist was examined.

Vortex-Induced Vibrations of an Inclined Cylinder in Flow

Jain, Anil B. — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:23:16 PST

When a bluff body is placed in flow, vortices are shed downstream of the body. For the case of a bluff body with a circular cross-section (a cylinder) attached to a spring and a damper, when the frequency of vortex shedding is close to the natural frequency of the structure, the cylinder oscillates in a direction perpendicular to the flow. This is called Vortex Induced Vibration (VIV) and is a canonical problem in fluid-structure interactions. The majority of studies on VIV of a flexibly mounted rigid cylinder are for the cases where the flow direction is perpendicular to the long axis of the structure. However, in many engineering applications, such as cable stays in bridges, mooring lines of floating offshore wind turbines and undersea pipelines, the flow direction may not be perpendicular to the structure. The hypothesis is that the VIV in inclined cylinders is similar to a normal-incidence case, if only the component of the free stream velocity normal to the cylinder axis is considered. This is called the Independence Principle (IP). The IP neglects the effect of the axial component of the flow, which is legit for small angles of inclination, but not for large angles. In this Thesis, a series of experiments have been conducted on a flexibly-mounted rigid cylinder placed inclined to the oncoming flow with various angles of inclination (0° < θ < 75°) in a subcritical Reynolds number range of 500 – 4,000 to investigate how the angle of inclination affects VIV. In these experiments, a rigid cylinder was mounted on springs, and air bearings were used to reduce the structural damping of the system. The system was placed in the test section of a recirculating water tunnel and crossflow displacements were measured. Even at high angles of inclination, large-amplitude oscillations were observed. The IP was found to be valid for angles of inclination up to 55°. While for all inclinations the onset of lock-in was observed to be at the same normalized flow velocity, for angles of inclination larger than 55°, the lock-in region (the range of dimensionless flow velocities for which the cylinder oscillates with a large amplitude) was smaller. These results show that the influence of the axial component of the flow is non-negligible for angles of inclination larger than 55°.

Finite Element Analysis of a Femur to Deconstruct the Design Paradox of Bone Curvature

Jade, Sameer — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:23:11 PST

The femur is the longest limb bone found in humans. Almost all the long limb bones found in terrestrial mammals, including the femur studied herein, have been observed to be loaded in bending and are curved longitudinally. The curvature in these long bones increases the bending stress developed in the bone, potentially reducing the bone’s load carrying capacity, i.e. its mechanical strength. Therefore, bone curvature poses a paradox in terms of the mechanical function of long limb bones. The aim of this study is to investigate and explain the role of longitudinal bone curvature in the design of long bones. In particular, it has been hypothesized that curvature of long bones results in a trade-off between the bone’s mechanical strength and its bending predictability. This thesis employs finite element analysis of human femora to address this issue. Simplified human femora with different curvatures were modeled and analyzed using ANSYS Workbench finite element analysis software. The results obtained are compared between different curvatures including a straight bone. We examined how the bone curvature affects the bending predictability and load carrying capacity of bones. Results were post processed to yield probability density functions (PDFs) for circumferential location of maximum equivalent stress for various bone curvatures to assess the bending predictability of bones. To validate our findings on the geometrically simplified ANSYS Workbench femur models, a digitally reconstructed femur model from a CT scan of a real human femur was employed. For this model we performed finite element analysis in the FEA tool, Strand7, executing multiple simulations for different load cases. The results from the CT scanned femur model and those from the CAD femur model were then compared. We found general agreement in trends but some quantitative differences most likely due to the geometric differences between the digitally reconstructed femur model and the simplified CAD models. As postulated by others, our results support the hypothesis that the bone curvature is a trade-off between the bone strength and its bending predictability. Bone curvature increases bending predictability at the expense of load carrying capacity.

A Multi-Level Hierarchical Finite Element Model for Capillary Failure in Soft Tissue

Huang, Lu — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:10:54 PST

Developing a more scientific way to determine the load threshold for capillary wall failure would be a big step forward in characterizing whether bruising is result from an abuse or an accident. In this thesis, the upper portion of the human arm was modeled and analyzed under dynamic loading conditions. Since the diameter of the arm is much larger than that of the capillary, a four-level hierarchical sub-modeling method was used to mathematically link the transient response of the global arm model to the response of a small volume in the muscle tissue containing one capillary. Soft tissue in the arm was modeled in two distinct ways. In one method each component of soft tissue was modeled used isotropic linear elastic properties to find the loading threshold that produces a hoop stress in the capillary wall equal to the capillary failure stress. In the other approach, nonlinear, hyper-elastic properties for skin, adipose, muscle tissue and capillary wall were employed to make the tissue behavior more realistic to that of a human arm. Material-appropriate constitutive functions were chosen for each layer. A mathematical technique implement in MATLAB was used to estimate and subtract rigid body motion from the total displacement to avoid excessive displacements of sub-models and focus more on the deformation-only displacement. It was found that modeling the skin, adipose, muscle and capillary as hyper-elastic resulted in significantly smaller deformations but larger loads that resulted in capillary failure.

Investigating the Relationship Between Material Property Axes and Strain Orientations in Cebus Apella Crania

Dzialo, Christine M. — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:10:31 PST

Probabilistic finite element analysis was used to determine whether there is a statistically significant relationship between maximum principal strain orientations and orthotropic material stiffness orientations in a primate cranium during mastication. We first sought to validate our cranium finite element model by sampling in-vivo strain and in-vivo muscle activation data during specimen mastication. A comparison of in vivo and finite element predicted (i.e. in silico) strains was performed to establish the realism of the FEM model. To the best of our knowledge, this thesis presents the world’s only complete in-vivo coupled with in-vitro validation data set of a primate cranium FEM. Our results indicate that a validated FEM of a Cebus apella cranium was achieved. Giving collaborating anthropologists, biologists, and engineers the confidence that these models have sufficient accuracy to address the research questions pertaining to cranial structure morphology.

Probabilistic finite element analysis design was then utilized to determine the dependence of maximum principal strain orientations on material stiffness orientations in particular craniofacial regions during mastication. It was discovered that the maximum principal strain orientations are more dependent on loading conditions and/or the shape of and location in the cranium rather than the material stiffness orientation of a particular region. It was also uncovered that the material stiffness orientations are not developed in a way that is optimal for feeding biomechanics from the perspective of minimization of total elastic strain energy. Results from this research will provide insights into the co-evolution of bone morphology and material properties in the facial skeleton.