Procesos de Mezcla en Flujos Turbulentos con Técnicas de la Mecánica de Fluidos Computacional (CFD)

The mixing processes are present in the hydraulics engineering field as well as in the environmental field, and they appear in many different situations that are of great interest for humankind. The mechanisms that rule these processes can be very diverse and complex, these being able to interact with each other. However, when a fluid has a turbulent behavior, it is highly unstable and three-dimensional, modifying greatly the other mixing processes. In these cases, the resolution for the fluid mechanics with classical methods can be extremely difficult, making the use of approximations and models necessary. On the other hand, in the last few years, numerical simulation techniques have advanced a lot, and with the velocity increase and the computational capacity, Computational Fluids Dynamics (CFD) allows the development of simulations of these complex processes. This doctoral thesis is motivated by the importance of analyzing the physics of the turbulent flow by numerical methods in different mixing processes of interest in the field of hydraulics engineering and the environmental fluid mechanics. It is intended to illustrate the utility and potentiality of the CFD through the application and analysis in four specific steps, grouped together in two groups of mixing processes: the ones influenced by a turbulent jet in a water tank, and the ones influenced by the turbulent structures due to the curved geometry of the meander channels. The four studied cases are: i) mixing processes in drinking water storage tanks, ii) inlet influence in the thermal stratification in hot water storage tanks, iii) turbulent flow and mixing in a meandering channel, and iv) turbulent flow and mixing in compound meandering channels. The developed work is focused in a practical context. To that effect, test simulations on each studied case have been developed.
[Valencia: 2017]

Compartir: