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Examples
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is the use of computers and numerical techniques to
solve problems involving fluid flow.
CFD has been successfully applied in many areas of fluid mechanics, including:
aerodynamics of cars and aircraft; hydrodynamics of ships; pumps and turbines; combustion
and heat transfer; chemical engineering. Applications in civil engineering include: wind
loading and dynamic response of structures; wind, wave and tidal energy; ventilation; fire and
explosion hazards; dispersion of pollutants and effluent; wave loading on coastal and offshore
structures; hydraulic structures such as weirs and spillways; sediment transport, hydrology.
More specialist applications include ocean currents, weather forecasting, plasma physics,
blood flow, heat dissipation from electronic circuitry.
This range of applications is broad and encompasses many different fluid phenomena and
CFD techniques. In particular, CFD for high-speed aerodynamics (where compressibility is
significant but viscous effects are often unimportant) is very different from that used to solve
low-speed, frictional flows typical of mechanical and civil engineering.
Although many elements of this course are generally applicable, the focus will be on
simulating viscous, incompressible flow by the finite-volume method.
(1) The flow field is discretised; i.e. field variables ( , u, v, w, p, …) are approximated
by their values at a finite number of nodes.
(2) The equations of motion are discretised (approximated in terms of values at nodes):
control-volume or differential equations algebraic equations
(continuous) (discrete)
(3) The resulting system of algebraic equations is solved to give values at the nodes.
The equations governing fluid motion are based on the fundamental physical principles:
• mass: change of mass = 0
• momentum: change of momentum = force × time
• energy: change of energy = work + heat
Additional conservation equations for individual constituents may apply for non-
homogeneous fluids (e.g. containing dissolved chemicals or imbedded particles).
When applied to the fluid continuum these may be expressed mathematically as either:
• integral (i.e. control-volume) equations;
• differential equations.
For an arbitrary control volume the balance of a physical quantity over an interval of time is
change = amount in − amount out + amount created
In fluid mechanics this is usually expressed in rate form by dividing by the time interval (and
transferring the net amount passing through the boundary to the LHS of the equation):
RATE OF CHANGE + NET FLUX = SOURCE
out of boundary inside V (1)
inside V
The important point is that this is a single, generic scalar-transport equation, irrespective
of whether the physical quantity concerned is mass, momentum, chemical content etc. Thus,
instead of dealing with lots of different equations we can consider the numerical solution of a
general scalar-transport equation (Section 4).
The finite-volume method, which is the subject of this course, is based on approximating
these control-volume equations.
In regions without shocks, interfaces or other discontinuities, the fluid-flow equations can
also be written in equivalent differential forms. These describe what is going on at a point
rather than over a whole control volume. Mathematically, they can be derived by making the
control volumes infinitesimally small. This will be demonstrated in Section 2, where it will
also be shown that there are several different ways of writing these differential equations.
The finite-difference method is based on the direct approximation of a differential form of the
governing equations.
Express the solution as a weighted sum of shape functions S (x), substitute into some form of
the governing equations and solve for the coefficients (aka degrees of freedom or weights).
e.g., for velocity,
u (x) = ∑ u S (x)
Finite-difference and finite-element methods are covered in more detail in the Computational
Mechanics course. This course will focus on the finite-volume method.
A1. Notation
Position/time:
x ≡ (x, y, z) or (x1, x2, x3) position; (in this course z is usually vertical)
t time
Field variables:
u ≡ (u, v, w) or (u1, u2, u3) velocity
p pressure
(p – patm is the gauge pressure; p* = p + gz is the piezometric pressure.)
T temperature
φ concentration (amount per unit mass or per unit volume)
Fluid properties:
density
dynamic viscosity
( ≡ / is the kinematic viscosity)
diffusivity
Statics
Pressure, density and temperature are connected by an equation of state; e.g. ideal gas law:
p = RT , R = R0 /m (5)
where R0 is the universal gas constant, m is the molar mass and T is the absolute temperature.
Dynamics
The equations governing fluid motion are based on the following fundamental principles:
• mass: change of mass = 0
• momentum: change of momentum = force × time
• energy: change of energy = work + heat
and for non-homogeneous fluids:
• conservation of individual constituents.
The following simple examples develop the notation and control-volume framework to be
used in the rest of the course.
Q1.
Water (density 1000 kg m–3) flows at o
2 m s–1 through a circular pipe of 45
10 cm
2 m/s
diameter 10 cm. What is the mass S1 S2
flux C across the surfaces S1 and S2?
D=10 cm Q2.
A water jet strikes normal to a fixed plate (see left).
F Neglect gravity and friction, and compute the force F
u=8 m/s required to hold the plate fixed.
Q3.
A fire in the Pariser hydraulics laboratory released 2 kg of a toxic gas into a room of
dimensions 30 m × 8 m × 5 m. Assuming the laboratory air to be well-mixed and to be vented
at a speed of 0.5 m s–1 through an aperture of 6 m2, calculate: (a) the initial concentration of
gas in ppm by mass; (b) the time taken to reach a safe concentration of 1 ppm.
(For air, density = 1.20 kg m–3.)
Q4.
A burst pipe at a factory causes a chemical to seep into a river at a rate of 2.5 kg hr–1. The
river is 5 m wide, 2 m deep and flows at 0.3 m s–1. What is the average concentration of the
chemical (in kg m–3) downstream of the spill?