A moving-deforming grid study was carried out using a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver, FLUENT ® 6.2.16. The goal was to quantify the level of mixing of a lower-viscosity additive (at a mass concentration below 10%) into a higher-viscosity process fluid for a large-scale metering gear pump configuration typical in plastics manufacturing. Second-order upwinding and bounded central differencing schemes were used to reduce numerical diffusion. A maximum solver progression rate of 0.0003 revolutions per time step was required for an accurate solution. Fluid properties, additive feed arrangement, pump scale, and pump speed were systematically studied for their effects on mixing. For each additive feed arrangement studied, the additive was fed in individual stream(s) into the pump-intake. Pump intake additive variability, in terms of coefficient of spatial variation (COV), was $>300%$ for all cases. The model indicated that the pump discharge additive COV ranged from 45% for a single centerline additive feed stream to 5.5% for multiple additive feed streams. It was found that viscous heating and thermal/shear-thinning characteristics in the process fluid slightly improved mixing, reducing the outlet COV to 3.2% for the multiple feed-stream case. The outlet COV fell to 2.0% for a half-scale arrangement with similar physics. Lastly, it was found that if the smaller unit’s speed were halved, the outlet COV was reduced to 1.5%.

Acoustics and ligament formation within a self-generating and self-sustaining pulsating three-stream injector are analyzed and discussed due to the importance of breakup and atomization of jets for agricultural, chemical, and energy-production industries. An extensive parametric study was carried out to evaluate the effects of simulation numerics and boundary conditions using various comparative metrics. Numerical considerations and boundary conditions made quite significant differences in some parameters, which stress the importance of using documented and consistent numerical discretization recipes when comparing various flow conditions and geometries. Validation exercises confirmed that correct droplet sizes could be produced computationally, the Sauter mean diameter (SMD) of droplets/ligaments could be quantified, and the trajectory of a droplet intersecting a shock wave could be accurately tracked. Swirl had a minor impact by slightly moving the ligaments away from the nozzle outlet and changing the spray to a hollow cone shape. Often, metrics were synchronized for a given simulation, indicating that a common driving mechanism was responsible for all the global instabilities, namely, liquid bridging and fountain production with shockletlike structures. Interestingly, both computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the experimental non-Newtonian primary droplet size results, when normalized by distance from the injector, showed an inversely proportional relationship with injector distance. Another important outcome was the ability to apply the models developed to other nozzle geometries, liquid properties, and flow conditions or to other industrial applications.

Validation of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model used to simulate turbulent exchange in an anatomically detailed human upper airway with realistic breathing states is provided. Proper model validation is vital in confirming that temporal mixing and species distribution are accurate, therefore making the model useful in generalized turbulent mixing studies of the upper airway. Numerous levels of refinement were tested for time-step and mesh independence. Higher and lower rigor groups of modeling methodologies involved spatial discretization schemes, gradient reconstruction methods, transient formulations, and turbulence frameworks. A dual mesh independence study revealed that the rate of approach to mesh independence is a function of computational rigor and that multiple mesh independence studies should be carried out in parallel. The final validated model consisted of the finest mesh used in this study (8 × 106 cells), a time-step equating to 4000 timesteps per breath cycle, and higher rigor modeling methodologies. While its results were within the acceptable deviation from the experimental data, it was not as close as the model that utilized the coarsest mesh (∼2 × 106 cells), the fewest timesteps per breath cycle (128 timesteps per breath cycle), and lower rigor methodologies. Though the latter model was closer to the experimental data, it was proven to not be numerically independent, highlighting the importance of utilizing a myriad of metrics to prove numerical independence. Restricting independence studies to only using metrics from experimental comparisons is insufficient for proper validation.