Fluid mechanics challenges in the energy/environment nexus: Insights gained via numerical simulation
Event details
| Date | 04.11.2010 |
| Hour | 12:15 |
| Speaker | Prof. Fotis Sotiropoulos, University of Minnesota |
| Location |
GC A331
|
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
The need for restoring degrading waterways coupled with the increasing demand for clean and renewable energy from wind and water resources have given rise to challenging fluid mechanics problems in the energy-environment nexus. Simulation-based research is in many cases the only viable approach for tackling such problems, which pose a formidable challenge to even the most advanced numerical methods available today. Flows of interest take place in arbitrarily complex multi-connected domains with moving, rigid or flexible immersed bodies interacting with the flow (fluid/structure interaction); involve physical phenomena coupled across disparate scales; occur over a broad range of Reynolds numbers and flow regimes; and are dominated by coherent vortical structures. This talk will present a novel and versatile computational fluid dynamics framework for simulating such flows that integrates immersed boundary methods with curvilinear, overset grids, features accurate and robust fluid-structure interaction algorithms, and is capable of carrying out coherent-structure-resolving simulations of turbulent flows in arbitrarily complex domains with dynamically evolving boundaries. The potential of the method will be demonstrated by discussing applications to study: 1) the hydrodynamics of aquatic swimming; 2) turbulent flow and transport in natural streams; and 3) hydrokinetic and wind turbine flows. Future grand challenges and opportunities for tackling a wide range of fluid mechanics problems in the energy-environment nexus via simulation-based research will also be discussed.
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- General public
- Free