• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.288-297
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• 2009

A serpentine channel geometry often used in a fuel cell has a strong pressure gradient between adjacent channels in specific regions. The pressure gradient helps some amount of reactant gas penetrate through a gas diffusion layer(GDL). As a result, the overall serpentine flow structure is slightly different from the intention of a designer. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of serpentine flow structure on current density distribution. By using a commercial code, STAR-CD, a numerical simulation is performed to analyze the fuel cell with high aspect ratio of active area. To increase the accuracy of the numerical simulation, GDL permeabilities are measured with various compressive forces. Three-dimensional flow field and current density distribution are calculated. For the verification of the numerical simulation results, water condensation process in the cathode channel is observed through a transparent bipolar plate. The result of this study shows that the region of relatively low current density corresponds that of dropwise condensation in cathode channels.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.87.2-87.2
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• 2011

This paper describes internal flow of a fuel cell's blower, which is mainly used for detached house and apartment. Test blower is operated by a diaphragm, which has suction and discharge port on the top of the blower. For analyzing the internal flow of the blower, three-dimensional Navier-Stokes analysis is introduced in the present study. Hybrid grid system consisted of hexa hedral, tetra hedral and prism mesh is adopted to describe the complex geometry of the diaphragm blower. Throughout the numerical simulation, it is found that the present numerical modeling for analyzing the internal flow of the test blower is suitable for understanding the unsteady nature inside the cavity of the diaphragm. Detailed unsteady flow is analyzed using the results obtained by numerical simulation.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.139-145
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• 2003

Diode laser sensor is conducted to measure the gas temperature in the liquid-gas 2-phase counter flow flame. C$\_$10/H/ sub 22/ and city gas were used as liquid fuel and gas fuel, respectively. Two vibrational overtones of H$_2$O were selected and measurements were carried out in the spray flame region stabilized the above gaseous premixed flame. The path-averaged temperature measurement using diode laser absorption method succeeded in the liquid fuel combustion environment regardless of droplets of wide range diameter. The path-averaged temperature measured in the post flame of liquid-gas 2-phase counter flow flame showed qualitative reliable results. The successful demonstration of time series temperature measurement in the liquid-gas 2-phase counter flow flame gave us motivation of trying to establish the effective control system in practical combustion system. These results demonstrated the ability of real-time feedback from combustor inside using the non-intrusive measurement as well as the possibility of application to practical combustion system. Failure case due to influence of spray flame was also discussed.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.877-884
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• 2004

In this paper, structural analysis is performed to investigate the deformation of porous media in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Structural deformation of air plate of the fuel cell causes the change in configuration and cross sectional area of the channel. The distributions of mass flow rate and pressure are major factors to decide the performance of a PEMFC. These factors are affected by channel configuration of air plate. Two kinds of numerical air plate models are suggested for flow analyses. Deformed porous media and undeformed porous media are considered for the two models. The Numerical flow analysis results between deformed porous media and undeformed porous media have some discrepancy in pressure distribution. The pressure and velocity distribution under a working condition are numerically calculated to predict the performance of the air plates. Pressure and velocity distributions are compared for two models. It is shown that structural deformation makes difference in flow analysis results.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.532-548
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• 2002

A hybrid model consisting of a modified TAB (Taylor Analogy Breakup) model and DVM (Discrete Vortex Method) is proposed for numerical analysis of the evaporating spray phenomena in diesel engines. The simulation process of the hybrid model is divided into three steps. First, the droplet breakup of injected fuel is analyzed by using the modified TAB model. Second, spray evaporation is calculated based on the theory of Siebers'liquid length. The liquid length analysis of injected fuel is used to integrate the modified TAB model and DVM. Lastly, both ambient gas flow and inner vortex flow of injected fuel are analyzed by using DVM. An experiment with an evaporative free spray at the early stage of its injection was conducted under in-cylinder like conditions to examine an accuracy of the present hybrid model. The calculated results of the gas jet flow by DVM agree well with the experimental results. The calculated and experimental results all confirm that the ambient gas flow dominates the downstream diesel spray flow.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.31 no.3 s.258
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• pp.264-272
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• 2007

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of nozzle orifice shapes and the nozzle length-to-diameter ratio(L/D) on the nozzle cavitation formation inside the orifice and the external flow pattern. The nozzle used in this work was tested the taper orifice nozzle and the rectangular orifice nozzle which was made from the transparent acrylic acid resin. For studying the effect of the nozzle L/D ratio, it was used to three L/D ratios of 3.33, 10, and 20. The cavitation flow of nozzle was visualized by using the ICCD camera and optical system. This work revealed that the flow rate and discharge coefficient($C_d$) of the taper orifice nozzle was larger than those of the rectangular orifice nozzle at the same injection pressure. The cavitation flow was observed in the nozzle orifice at the low injection pressure and the breakup of liquid jet was promoted as the L/D ratio is decreased. The cavitation of biodiesel fuel was formed at the lower injection pressure than that of diesel fuel because of higher viscosity and density.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.41-45
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• 2007

The effects of channel area on the performance of regenerative type fuel pump were numerically studied by commercial CFD code (ANSYS CFX-10). To examine the effects of channel area, the shapes of the side channel and blade were simplified. The channel area affected the flow characteristics of the internal recirculation flow between the side channel and the blade groove and also made a difference in the overall performance. These loss mechanism with circulation flow were adopted as a loss coefficient in the performance prediction program. The loss coefficient was newly derived from the results of calculations with different channel area, and compared with the experimental results in the reference paper and used to modify the performance prediction program. The circulation flow characteristics with different channel area, which is related with loss mechanism, were also discussed with the results of 3-dimensional flow calculations.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.19-28
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• 2016

Objective of this study is to compare the inherent characteristics of natural convection flow inside the canister of spent fuel dry storage system with different backfill gases by utilizing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. Four working fluids were selected for comparison study. Helium currently used backfill gas for canister, air, nitrogen, and argon are frequently used as coolant in many heat transfer applications. The results indicate that helium has very distinct conductive behavior and show very weak natural convective flow compared to the others. Argon showed the strongest natural convective flow but also the worst coolability. Air and nitrogen showed similar characteristics to each other. However, due to difference in Prandtl number, nitrogen showed more effective natural convective flow. These results suggest that experimental validation for the nitrogen is needed to investigate the potential coolability other than currently commercially used helium.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.386-392
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• 2014

The effective water management in a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is one of the key strategies for improving cell performance and durability. In this work, an ex situ measurement was carried out to understand the water droplet behavior on the surface of gas diffusion layer (GDL) as a fundamental study for establishing novel water management. For that purpose, simplified cell including one rib and two flow channels was designed and fabricated. Using this ex situ device, the water droplet emergence through the GDL of the PEMFC was emulated to understand liquid water transport through the porous diffusion medium. Through the visualization experiment, the emergence and growth of water droplets at the channel/GDL interface are mainly observed with the surface characteristics of GDL (SGL 10BA, 24BA) and rib when the liquid water passes through the GDL and is expelled to the flow channel. It is expected that the results obtained from this study can contribute to the better understanding on the water droplet behavior (emergence and removal) in the flow channels of PEMFC.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.7
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• pp.2714-2719
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• 2022

The present paper proposes some new computational methods and results in the framework of flow computation through congested domains seen as porous media, as it can be found in the core of a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR). The flow is thus mostly governed by the distribution of pressure losses, both through the porous structures, such as fuel assemblies, and in the thin fluid layers between them. The purpose of the present paper is to consider the question of the interaction of a flow and a rod bundle from an analytical point of view gathering all the contributions through a set of equations as simple and representative as possible. It aims at demonstrating a sound understanding of the relevant phenomena governing the flow establishment in the geometry of interest instead of relying mainly on a posteriori observations obtained both experimentally and numerically. Comparison with two set of experimental results showed good agreement. The model proposed being analytical it appears easily implementable for studies needing an expression of fluid forces in a rod array as for fuel assembly bowing issue. It would be interesting to test the reliability of the model on other geometry with different P/R ratios.