Taking into account the phase fraction during transition for the first-order magnetocaloric materials, an improved isothermal entropy change determination has been put forward based on the Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) equation. It was found that the isothermal entropy change value evaluated by our method is in excellent agreement with those determined from the Maxwell-relation (MR) for Ni-Mn-Sn Heusler alloys, which usually presents a weak field-induced phase transforming behavior. In comparison with MR, this method could give rise to a favorable result derived from few thermomagnetic measurements. More importantly, we can eliminate the isothermal entropy change overestimation derived from MR, which always exists in the cases of Ni-Co-Mn-In and MnAs systems with a prominent field-induced transition. These results confirmed that such a CC-equation-based method is quite practical and superior to the MR-based ones in eliminating the spurious spike and reducing measuring cost.
The recently proposed discrete unified gas kinetic scheme (DUGKS) is a finite volume method for deterministic solution of the Boltzmann model equation with asymptotic preserving property. In DUGKS, the numerical flux of the distribution function is determined from a local numerical solution of the Boltzmann model equation using an unsplitting approach. The time step and mesh resolution are not restricted by the molecular collision time and mean free path. To demonstrate the capacity of DUGKS in practical problems, this paper extends the DUGKS to arbitrary unstructured meshes. Several tests of both internal and external flows are performed, which include the cavity flow ranging from continuum to free molecular regimes, a multiscale flow between two connected cavities with a pressure ratio of 10000, and a high speed flow over a cylinder in slip and transitional regimes. The numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the DUGKS in simulating multiscale flow problems.
A Cartesian grid method combined with a simplified gas kinetic scheme is presented for subsonic and supersonic viscous flow simulation on complex geometries. Under the Cartesian mesh, the computational grid points are classified into four different categories, the fluid point, the solid point, the drop point, and the interpolation point. The boundaries are represented by a set of direction-oriented boundary points. A constrained weighted least square method is employed to evaluate the physical quantities at the interpolation points. Different boundary conditions, including isothermal boundary, adiabatic boundary, and Euler slip boundary, are presented by different interpolation strategies. We also propose a simplified gas kinetic scheme as the flux solver for both subsonic and supersonic flow computations. The methodology of constructing a simplified kinetic flux function can be extended to other flow systems. A few numerical examples are used to validate the Cartesian grid method and the simplified flux function. The reconstruction scheme for recovering the boundary conditions of compressible viscous and heat conducting flow with a Cartesian mesh can provide a smooth distribution of physical quantities at solid boundary, and present an accurate solution for the flow study with complex geometry.
Fluid dynamic equations are valid in their respective modeling scales. With a variation of the modeling scales, theoretically there should have a continuous spectrum of fluid dynamic equations. In order to study multiscale flow evolution efficiently, the dynamics in the computational fluid has to be changed with the scales. A direct modeling of flow physics with a changeable scale may become an appropriate approach. The unified gas-kinetic scheme (UGKS) is a direct modeling method in the mesh size scale, and its underlying flow physics depends on the resolution of the cell size relative to the particle mean free path. The cell size of UGKS is not limited by the particle mean free path. With the variation of the ratio between the numerical cell size and local particle mean free path, the UGKS recovers the flow dynamics from the particle transport and collision in the kinetic scale to the wave propagation in the hydrodynamic scale. The previous UGKS is mostly constructed from the evolution solution of kinetic model equations. This work is about the further development of the UGKS with the implementation of the full Boltzmann collision term in the region where it is needed. The central ingredient of the UGKS is the coupled treatment of particle transport and collision in the flux evaluation across a cell interface, where a continuous flow dynamics from kinetic to hydrodynamic scales is modeled. The newly developed UGKS has the asymptotic preserving (AP) property of recovering the NS solutions in the continuum flow regime, and the full Boltzmann solution in the rarefied regime. In the mostly unexplored transition regime, the UGKS itself provides a valuable tool for the flow study in this regime. The mathematical properties of the scheme, such as stability, accuracy, and the asymptotic preserving, will be analyzed in this paper as well.
Due to the limited cell resolution in the representation of flow variables, a piecewise continuous initial reconstruction with discontinuous jump at a cell interface is usually used in modern computational fluid dynamics methods. Starting from the discontinuity, a Riemann problem in the Godunov method is solved for the flux evaluation across the cell interface in a finite volume scheme. With the increasing of Mach number in the CFD simulations, the adaptation of the Riemann solver seems introduce intrinsically a mechanism to develop instabilities in strong shock regions. Theoretically, the Riemann solution of the Euler equations are based on the equilibrium assumption, which may not be valid in the non-equilibrium shock layer. In order to clarify the flow physics from a discontinuity, the unsteady flow behavior of one-dimensional contact and shock wave is studied on a time scale of (0~10000) times of the particle collision time. In the study of the non-equilibrium flow behavior from a discontinuity, the collision-less Boltzmann equation is first used for the time scale within one particle collision time, then the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method will be adapted to get the further evolution solution. The transition from the free particle transport to the dissipative Navier-Stokes (NS) solutions are obtained as an increasing of time. The exact Riemann solution becomes a limiting solution with infinite number of particle collisions. For the high Mach number flow simulations, the points in the shock transition region, even though the region is enlarged numerically to the mesh size, should be considered as the points inside a highly non-equilibrium shock layer.
