Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

Hardware

The CFD Lab in the Mechanical Engineering Dept. has direct access to the Hrothgar cluster available at the High-Performance Computing Center at Texas Tech (www.hpcc.ttu.edu).

It has 640 nodes (7680 cores) for parallel jobs, 128 nodes (1024 cores) for serial jobs, and 46 private nodes. Each of the parallel nodes contains two Westmere 2.8 GHz 6-core processors with 24 GB main memory. The serial nodes contain two Nehalem 3.0 GHz 4-core processors with 16 GB main memory. The parallel and private nodes are connected through double-data-rate Infiniband networking that provides full cross-section bandwidth among the parallel nodes. The parallel nodes have a peak rating of 86 teraflops and a recorded high-performance LINPACK rating of 68 teraflops. The serial nodes are interconnected with Gigabit Ethernet.

Software

● The Lab maintains its own version of OpenFOAM software to model the Liquid Jet Impingement Cooling System (LJICS).
• An in-house, flow analysis package, HEAD3D, is available to analyze three dimensional, steady or transient, turbulent flows in or around complex geometries. Currently, the code uses the standard k-model to model the turbulence in the flow. HEAD3D can handle unstructured mesh.
• The laboratory has a license to run the commercial grid generation package ICEM CFD.
• Visualization of the computed results is achieved with the aid of the commercial package EnSight and
Fieldview.
● The Lab has a license to run FLUENT© and COMSOL©.

Research Areas

Liquid Jet Impingement Cooling System

A novel wall function is employed to model the heat transfer in a Liquid Jet Cooling System using OpenFOAM. The results were presented at the North American OpenFOAM user Conference on October 30th, in Farmington Hills, Detroit.

Study of Vehicle Aerodynamics and Wind Noise

The CFD Lab has extensive experience in modeling flow around automobiles. Currently, a stochastic noise generation and Radiation model is being evaluated for its suitability to predict aerodynamically generated sound.

Modeling Axisymmetric Wakes with Swirl

The Boundary Layer code, EXPRESS, is modified to study the development of an axisymmetric wake with a swirl. Two doctoral students are working on this project. The developed model would be employed in wind farm calculations to take accurate account of the wake effects in computing the actual power output from the wind farm.

Modeling High-Frequency Ventilating Machines

High-Frequency Ventilating machines are used in the health care industry for patients with respiratory problems. This project is a collaborative effort between the faculty from Texas Tech Health Sciences Center and the CFD laboratory at Texas Tech.

Flow problems studied with the aid of HEAD3D
• Computation of drag coefficient and pressure distribution around a three-dimensional
bluff body.
• Calculation of fluid flow and Heat Transfer in a rotating channel.
• Numerical simulation of the Cooling process inside a minivan passenger compartment.
• Flow around a rotating wheel.
● Blood flow through arteries.
• Numerical computation of temperature inside a nuclear storage room with buoyancy effects.