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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2017) | Viewed by 62217

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Prof. Dr. Marco Marengo

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Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Pavia, via Ferrata 3, 27100 Pavia, Italy
Interests: two-phase flows; boiling; smart surfaces; drop impact; liquid interfaces; sprays; thermal systems; heat pipes; microfluidics; microdroplet management; microgravity

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With “energy systems” we are considering all the thermodynamic systems where heat and mass transfer occurs. Such systems implicate a huge number of phenomena and applications, from space to ground. Therefore, in order to make the contents of this Special Issue more homogeneous, we would like to focus to the specific area where recently advanced and innovative numerical and analytical modeling techniques have been successfully implemented. Such methods may have a great impact for the comprehension and virtual reproducibility of physical phenomena, supporting the increase of industrial system performance and thermal efficiency. I am very glad to invite all the colleagues and scientists working in the field of thermo-fluid dynamics and thermal sciences to submit a paper with at last two of the following three main characteristics: (1) inspiring or offering a better explanation of physical processes, (2) with a clear link to a high impact and novel application, and (3) containing an original advancement in terms of numerical modeling or methods.

Prof. Dr. Marco Marengo
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

thermal systems
multi-phase flows
boiling
evaporation
condensation
cavitation
liquid interfaces
sprays
porous media
heat pipes
heat exchangers
microfluidics
nanofluids
nucleation
compressible flows
VOF method
level-set method
phase field simulation
molecular dynamics
lattice Boltzmann

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

4099 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Advances in Integrated Vehicle Thermal Management and Numerical Simulation

by Yan Wang, Qing Gao, Tianshi Zhang, Guohua Wang, Zhipeng Jiang and Yunxia Li

Energies 2017, 10(10), 1636; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10101636 - 18 Oct 2017

Cited by 52 | Viewed by 19490

Abstract

With the increasing demands for vehicle dynamic performance, economy, safety and comfort, and with ever stricter laws concerning energy conservation and emissions, vehicle power systems are becoming much more complex. To pursue high efficiency and light weight in automobile design, the power system and its vehicle integrated thermal management (VITM) system have attracted widespread attention as the major components of modern vehicle technology. Regarding the internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV), its integrated thermal management (ITM) mainly contains internal combustion engine (ICE) cooling, turbo-charged cooling, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) cooling, lubrication cooling and air conditioning (AC) or heat pump (HP). As for electric vehicles (EVs), the ITM mainly includes battery cooling/preheating, electric machines (EM) cooling and AC or HP. With the rational effective and comprehensive control over the mentioned dynamic devices and thermal components, the modern VITM can realize collaborative optimization of multiple thermodynamic processes from the aspect of system integration. Furthermore, the computer-aided calculation and numerical simulation have been the significant design methods, especially for complex VITM. The 1D programming can correlate multi-thermal components and the 3D simulating can develop structuralized and modularized design. Additionally, co-simulations can virtualize simulation of various thermo-hydraulic behaviors under the vehicle transient operational conditions. This article reviews relevant researching work and current advances in the ever broadening field of modern vehicle thermal management (VTM). Based on the systematic summaries of the design methods and applications of ITM, future tasks and proposals are presented. This article aims to promote innovation of ITM, strengthen the precise control and the performance predictable ability, furthermore, to enhance the level of research and development (R&D). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Thermal Simulation of Energy Systems)

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8568 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Parametric Analysis of Design Parameter Effects on the Performance of a Solar Desiccant Evaporative Cooling System in Brisbane, Australia

by Yunlong Ma, Suvash C. Saha, Wendy Miller and Lisa Guan

Energies 2017, 10(7), 849; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10070849 - 25 Jun 2017

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 5120

Abstract

Solar desiccant cooling is widely considered as an attractive replacement for conventional vapor compression air conditioning systems because of its environmental friendliness and energy efficiency advantages. The system performance of solar desiccant cooling strongly depends on the input parameters associated with the system components, such as the solar collector, storage tank and backup heater, etc. In order to understand the implications of different design parameters on the system performance, this study has conducted a parametric analysis on the solar collector area, storage tank volume, and backup heater capacity of a solid solar desiccant cooling system for an office building in Brisbane, Australia climate. In addition, a parametric analysis on the outdoor air humidity ratio control set-point which triggers the operation of the desiccant wheel has also been investigated. The simulation results have shown that either increasing the storage tank volume or increasing solar collector area would result in both increased solar fraction (SF) and system coefficient of performance (COP), while at the same time reduce the backup heater energy consumption. However, the storage tank volume is more sensitive to the system performance than the collector area. From the economic aspect, a storage capacity of 30 m³/576 m² has the lowest life cycle cost (LCC) of $405,954 for the solar subsystem. In addition, 100 kW backup heater capacity is preferable for the satisfaction of the design regeneration heating coil hot water inlet temperature set-point with relatively low backup heater energy consumption. Moreover, an outdoor air humidity ratio control set-point of 0.008 kgWater/kgDryAir is more reasonable, as it could both guarantee the indoor design conditions and achieve low backup heater energy consumption. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Thermal Simulation of Energy Systems)

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5657 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sensible Heat Transfer during Droplet Cooling: Experimental and Numerical Analysis

by Emanuele Teodori, Pedro Pontes, Ana Moita, Anastasios Georgoulas, Marco Marengo and Antonio Moreira

Energies 2017, 10(6), 790; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10060790 - 09 Jun 2017

Cited by 27 | Viewed by 5479

Abstract

This study presents the numerical reproduction of the entire surface temperature field resulting from a water droplet spreading on a heated surface, which is compared with experimental data. High-speed infrared thermography of the back side of the surface and high-speed images of the side view of the impinging droplet were used to infer on the solid surface temperature field and on droplet dynamics. Numerical reproduction of the phenomena was performed using OpenFOAM CFD toolbox. An enhanced volume of fluid (VOF) model was further modified for this purpose. The proposed modifications include the coupling of temperature fields between the fluid and the solid regions, to account for transient heat conduction within the solid. The results evidence an extremely good agreement between the temporal evolution of the measured and simulated spreading factors of the considered droplet impacts. The numerical and experimental dimensionless surface temperature profiles within the solid surface and along the droplet radius, were also in good agreement. Most of the differences were within the experimental measurements uncertainty. The numerical results allowed relating the solid surface temperature profiles with the fluid flow. During spreading, liquid recirculation within the rim, leads to the appearance of different regions of heat transfer that can be correlated with the vorticity field within the droplet. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Thermal Simulation of Energy Systems)

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24357 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

An Enhanced VOF Method Coupled with Heat Transfer and Phase Change to Characterise Bubble Detachment in Saturated Pool Boiling

by Anastasios Georgoulas, Manolia Andredaki and Marco Marengo

Energies 2017, 10(3), 272; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10030272 - 24 Feb 2017

Cited by 50 | Viewed by 10525

Abstract

The present numerical investigation identifies quantitative effects of fundamental controlling parameters on the detachment characteristics of isolated bubbles in cases of pool boiling in the nucleate boiling regime. For this purpose, an improved Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach, developed previously in the general framework of OpenFOAM Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Toolbox, is further coupled with heat transfer and phase change. The predictions of the model are quantitatively verified against an existing analytical solution and experimental data in the literature. Following the model validation, four different series of parametric numerical experiments are performed, exploring the effect of the initial thermal boundary layer (ITBL) thickness for the case of saturated pool boiling of R113 as well as the effects of the surface wettability, wall superheat and gravity level for the cases of R113, R22 and R134a refrigerants. It is confirmed that the ITBL is a very important parameter in the bubble growth and detachment process. Furthermore, for all of the examined working fluids the bubble detachment characteristics seem to be significantly affected by the triple-line contact angle (i.e., the wettability of the heated plate) for equilibrium contact angles higher than 45°. As expected, the simulations revealed that the heated wall superheat is very influential on the bubble growth and detachment process. Finally, besides the novelty of the numerical approach, a last finding is the fact that the effect of the gravity level variation in the bubble detachment time and the volume diminishes with the increase of the ambient pressure. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Thermal Simulation of Energy Systems)

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809 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Thermal Simulation of the Fresh Food Compartment in a Domestic Refrigerator

by Juan M. Belman-Flores, Sergio Ledesma, Armando Gallegos-Muñoz and Donato Hernandez

Energies 2017, 10(1), 128; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10010128 - 19 Jan 2017

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 6150

Abstract

In the field of domestic refrigeration, it is important to look for methods that can be used to simulate, and, thus, improve the thermal behavior of the fresh food compartment. In this sense, this study proposes some methods to model the thermal behavior of this compartment when the shelves’ positions are changed. Temperature measurements at specific locations in this compartment were obtained. Several shelf position combinations were performed to use three 2D interpolation methods in order to simulate the temperature mean and the temperature variance. The methods used were: Lagrange’s interpolation, cubic spline interpolation and bilinear interpolation. Two validation points were chosen to verify the proposed methods. By comparing the experimental results with the computer simulations, it was possible to conclude that the method of Lagrange’s interpolation provided values that were not close to the real measured values. On the other hand, it was observed that the method of bilinear interpolation offered the best results, estimating values which were very close to the actual experimental measurements. These interpolation methods were used to build color thermal graphs that can be used to find some of the most appropriate shelf position combinations in this type of refrigerator. By inspection of these thermal graphs, it can be seen that the lowest average temperature was obtained when one shelf was located at 24.5 cm while the second shelf was located at 29.5 cm measured from the top of the compartment. In the same way, it can be seen that the minimum temperature variance was obtained when only one shelf was inside the compartment and this shelf was located at 29.5 cm. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Thermal Simulation of Energy Systems)

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10519 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Coupling Fields Characteristics of Cable Joints and Application in the Evaluation of Crimping Process Defects

by Fan Yang, Kai Liu, Peng Cheng, Shaohua Wang, Xiaoyu Wang, Bing Gao, Yalin Fang, Rong Xia and Irfan Ullah

Energies 2016, 9(11), 932; https://doi.org/10.3390/en9110932 - 09 Nov 2016

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 8078

Abstract

The internal defects of cable joints always accelerate the deterioration of insulation, until finally accidents can arise due to the explosion of the joints. The formation process of this damage often involves changes in the electromagnetic, temperature and stress distribution of the cable joint, therefore, it is necessary to analyze the electromagnetic-thermal-mechanical distribution of cable joints. Aiming at solving this problem, the paper sets up a 3-D electromagnetic-thermal-mechanical coupling model of cable joints under crimping process defects. Based on the model, the electromagnetic losses distribution, temperature distribution and stress distribution of a cable joint and body are calculated. Then, the coupling fields characteristics in different contact coefficient k, ambient temperature T_amb and load current I were analyzed, and according to the thermal-mechanical characteristics of a cable joint under internal defects, the temperature difference ΔT_f and stress difference Δσ_f of cable surface are applied to evaluate the internal cable joint defects. Finally, a simplified model of the cable joint is set up to verify the accuracy of the coupling field model proposed in this paper, which indicates that the model can be used to analyze the coupling fields characteristics of cable joints and the method can be applied to evaluate crimping process defects of cable joints. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Thermal Simulation of Energy Systems)

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5152 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Temperature Field Accurate Modeling and Cooling Performance Evaluation of Direct-Drive Outer-Rotor Air-Cooling In-Wheel Motor

by Feng Chai, Yue Tang, Yulong Pei, Peixin Liang and Hongwei Gao

Energies 2016, 9(10), 818; https://doi.org/10.3390/en9100818 - 14 Oct 2016

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 5920

Abstract

High power density outer-rotor motors commonly use water or oil cooling. A reasonable thermal design for outer-rotor air-cooling motors can effectively enhance the power density without the fluid circulating device. Research on the heat dissipation mechanism of an outer-rotor air-cooling motor can provide guidelines for the selection of the suitable cooling mode and the design of the cooling structure. This study investigates the temperature field of the motor through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and presents a method to overcome the difficulties in building an accurate temperature field model. The proposed method mainly includes two aspects: a new method for calculating the equivalent thermal conductivity (ETC) of the air-gap in the laminar state and an equivalent treatment to the thermal circuit that comprises a hub, shaft, and bearings. Using an outer-rotor air-cooling in-wheel motor as an example, the temperature field of this motor is calculated numerically using the proposed method; the results are experimentally verified. The heat transfer rate (HTR) of each cooling path is obtained using the numerical results and analytic formulas. The influences of the structural parameters on temperature increases and the HTR of each cooling path are analyzed. Thereafter, the overload capability of the motor is analyzed in various overload conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Thermal Simulation of Energy Systems)

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