Valves are important components in controlling the amount of fluid going to devices. One of these types is the butterfly valve (BFV) that adjusts the amount of flow by rotating the valve disk by means of its shafts which is usually located in the middle of the flow. Despite its common usage in various applications, the BFV is known to cause a high-pressure drop. Conversely, the pinch valve is another type of flow control device that uses a pinching mechanism to open and close the inner tube by pinching at different degrees. The absence of flow-controlling mechanisms in the flow path, such as the valve disk and its shaft, contribute to the minimal pressure drop in pinch valves. The high-pressure drop in BFVs and the minimal pressure drop in pinch valve flow make it worthwhile to investigate and compare their flow at all opening positions of the two valves. Therefore, this work numerically explores the potential of using the pinch valve as an alternative to the BFV in terms of its ability to attain a lower pressure loss, hence better flow rate. The influence of various BFV parameters such as shaft diameter, valve thickness, and valve disk edge were examined. The performance characteristics of both valves were obtained using CFD models formed on the SolidWorks program. This CFD model solves the differential equations using the finite element method. Moreover, a mathematical model to determine the area of the pinch valve at various pinching degrees was developed and compared with the results obtained from other mathematical models and CFD. It was shown that using a flat 1 mm valve disk thickness with round edges resulted in a 7.5% increase in mass flow rate compared to standard BFVs. On the other hand, using the pinch valve resulted in over a 700% mass flow rate compared to the BFV at a 25% opening position and a 49% increase in flow rate at a 75% opening position. Thus, the pinch valve has the potential to replace the BFV due to its better flow characteristics in any application.

The mitigation of the risks of passenger injuries when a vehicle is involved in a collision with a street pole shielded with a layer of tire-derived material (TDM) was assessed. This can effectively absorb a fraction of the total energy from a speeding vehicle. Since such tests are expensive to conduct experimentally, the study relies on using the Abaqus/Explicit FEA solver to accurately calculate the non-linear nature of this scenario. Two categories of this scenario were evaluated to understand the effect a shielded street pole has on the vehicle—and the total absorbed energies during frontal and corner collisions, which are typically the most common categories of such accidents to happen. Results show that at lower speeds, these reinforcements are least effective in absorbing some of the kinetic energy applied by the vehicle, with about 5% of the energy absorbed by the reinforcement. At higher speeds, however, the results show that the TDM reinforcement absorbs about 28% of kinetic energy, which can reduce injury of the vehicle occupants, as well as decrease the damage on poles. Results for this simulation also show that there is a critical thickness of TDM that can absorb these kinetic energies, after which further thicknesses results in energies being applied back to the vehicle, therefore negating any purpose to further increase TDM thicknesses.

The impact analysis of vehicle collision on street poles was investigated, as well as an assessment of which type of impact—frontal or corner—contributes to the most damages on both the car and the streetlamp. This work was accomplished using Abaqus/Explicit software to numerically simulate the crashes at three different velocities, 12, 17, and 22 m·s⁻¹, and extract relations such as the energy models, the specific energy absorption (SEA) of the materials tested, and the impact forces. Two materials were used for the street pole: aluminum Al-6061 and ASTM A36 grade steel. Findings such as the influence of the SEA on the vehicle’s velocity, the relationship between the deformation of the street pole and the vehicle’s velocity, as well as the improvement of previously studied models by including damage parameters are presented.

A reduced-order, mass- and energy-conserving combustion-capacity model was developed to represent premixed and mixing-controlled heat release in a direct-injection diesel engine. Unlike conventional reduced-order formulations that prescribe heat-release shape or correlate heat release directly with fitted functions, the proposed framework first determines the fuel mass physically capable of combustion from the simultaneous availability of injected fuel and stoichiometric air. Fuel prepared during the ignition-delay period forms a finite premixed reservoir that is consumed through an analytical depletion law. After the start of combustion, the remaining fuel and entrained air define a continuously evolving mixing-controlled combustion capacity consumed through a finite-rate formulation. Explicit fuel-allocation and conservation constraints prevent double-counting between the two combustion stages and limit cumulative heat release to the available fuel chemical energy. The model was evaluated using experimentally derived apparent heat-release-rate histories at six engine speeds from 1200 to 2200 rpm and brake torques of 150 and 200 N·m. The premixed combustion-rate coefficient was determined for each operating condition from the corresponding average fuel-injection pressure difference, while the mixing-controlled coefficient was maintained constant. Across the 12 operating conditions, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) ranged from 0.0055 to 0.0224 kJ/°CA, the mean absolute error (MAE) from 0.0032 to 0.0113 kJ/°CA, and R² from 0.446 to 0.968. The absolute peak heat-release-rate error remained below 3% for 10 of the 12 cases. The results demonstrate that the proposed framework reproduces the principal apparent heat-release characteristics while maintaining explicit separation and conservation of the premixed and mixing-controlled fuel reservoirs.