Biomedical subjects

S W Armfield

Publications and source records attributed to S W Armfield.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Unsteady natural convection on an evenly heated vertical plate for Prandtl number Pr< 1.

The transient behavior of the natural convection boundary-layer flow adjacent to a vertical plate heated with a uniform flux in a quiescent homogeneous ambient fluid with Prandtl number Pr<1 is investigated by scaling analysis and direct numerical simulation (DNS). The flow is characterized by a startup stage, a short transitional stage and a steady state. The flow is parametrized by the thermal and velocity boundary-layer thickness scales, the vertical velocity scale, the time scale for the boundary layer to reach the steady state and the plate temperature scale. Scaling analysis is used to obtain laws relating these quantities to the flow governing parameters, the Rayleigh number Ra, the Prandtl number, and the Boussinesq number Bo=RaPr which is a much more important control parameter than Ra for small Pr fluids. A series of DNS with selected values of Ra and Pr in the ranges of 10(6)< or =R< or =10(10) and 0.01< or =Pr < or =0.5 are used to validate the scaling laws and obtain scaling constants.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2005

Scaling laws for unsteady natural convection cooling of fluid with Prandtl number less than one in a vertical cylinder.

The flow behavior associated with cooling an initially quiescent isothermal Newtonian fluid with Prandtl number (Pr) less than one in a vertical cylinder by unsteady natural convection with an imposed lower temperature on vertical sidewalls is investigated by scaling analysis and direct numerical simulation. The flow is dominated by three distinct stages of development, i.e., the boundary-layer development stage adjacent to the sidewall, the stratification stage, and the cooling-down stage, respectively. The first stage can be further divided into three distinct substages, i.e., the start-up stage, the transitional stage, and the boundary-layer steady-state stage, respectively. A scaling analysis is carried out to obtain scaling laws for the basic flow features in terms of the flow control parameters, i.e., the Rayleigh number Ra, Pr, and the aspect ratio of the cylinder A , respectively. A series of direct numerical simulations with selected values of A , Ra, and Pr in the ranges of 1/3< or = A< or =3, 10(6) < or =Ra < or = 10(10) , and 0.01< or =Pr< or =0.5 are carried out, and it is found that the numerical results agree well with the scaling laws. These numerical results are further used to quantify these scaling laws for Ra, A , and Pr in the above-mentioned ranges.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2004

Long-term behavior of cooling fluid in a rectangular container.

In this study, the long-term behavior of cooling an initially quiescent isothermal Newtonian fluid in a rectangular container with an infinite length by unsteady natural convection due to a fixed wall temperature has been investigated by scaling analysis and direct numerical simulation. Two specific cases are considered. Case 1 assumes that the cooling of the fluid is caused by the imposed fixed temperature on the vertical sidewall while the top and bottom boundaries are adiabatic. Case 2 assumes that the cooling is caused by the imposed fixed temperature on both the vertical sidewall and the bottom boundary while the top boundary is adiabatic. The appropriate parameters to represent the long-term behavior of the fluid cooling in the container are the transient average fluid temperature T(a)(t) over the whole volume of the container per unit length (i.e., the transient area average fluid temperature, as used in the subsequent numerical simulations) at time t and the average Nusselt number on the cooling boundary. A scaling analysis has been carried out which shows that for both cases theta(a)(tau) scales as e(-C(ARa)(-1/4) tau), where theta(a)(tau) is the dimensionless form of T(a)(t), tau is the dimensionless time, A is the aspect ratio of the container, Ra is the Rayleigh number, and C is a proportionality constant. A series of direct numerical simulations with the selected values of A, Ra, and Pr (Pr is the Prandtl number) in the ranges of 1/3< or =A< or =3, 6 x 10(6) < or =Ra< or =6 x 10(10), and 1< or =Pr< or =1000 have been carried out for both cases to validate the developed scaling relations. It is found that these numerical results agree well with the scaling relations. The numerical results have also been used to quantify the scaling relations and it is found that C=0.645 and 0.705 respectively for Cases 1 and 2 with Ra, A and Pr in the above-mentioned ranges.

Biophysics↗

PubMed2002

Weak fountains in a stratified fluid.

The behavior of weak axisymmetric and plane fountains resulting from the injection of denser fluid upwards into large containers containing a stably stratified fluid has been explored using dimensional analysis, scaling analysis, and direct numerical simulation. For weak fountains, with Froude number Fr approximately 1.0, dimensional and scaling analyses have been used to derive scaling relations for the dimensionless fountain height, width, thickness of the temperature layer, and development times in terms of the Froude number Fr, Reynolds number Re, Prandtl number Pr, and ambient stratification number s. Numerical simulations have been carried out for a series of Fr, Re, Pr, and s for both axisymmetric and plane fountains to validate and quantify the scaling relations obtained by the dimensional and scaling analyses. The numerical results have been found to agree well with the analytical scaling relations.

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