CFD Fluid FlowHeat Transfer

Mälardalen University Doctoral Dissertation 282
Fluid flow and heat transfer simulations
Md Lokman Hosain FLUID FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER SIMULATIONS FOR COMPLEX INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS
for complex industrial applications
From Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes towards smoothed particle hydrodynamics
Md Lokman Hosain
Address: P.O. Box 883, SE-721 23 Västerås. Sweden

ISBN 978-91-7485-415-2
2018
Address: P.O. Box 325, SE-631 05 Eskilstuna. Sweden

E-mail: info@mdh.se Web: www.mdh.se ISSN 1651-4238
Mälardalen University Press Dissertations
No. 282
FLUID FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER SIMULATIONS

FOR COMPLEX INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS
FROM REYNOLDS AVERAGED NAVIER-STOKES
TOWARDS SMOOTHED PARTICLE HYDRODYNAMICS
Md Lokman Hosain
2018
School of Business, Society and Engineering

Copyright © Md Lokman Hosain, 2018
ISBN 978-91-7485-415-2
ISSN 1651-4238
Printed by E-Print AB, Stockholm, Sweden
Mälardalen University Press Dissertations
No. 282
FLUID FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER SIMULATIONS

FOR COMPLEX INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS
FROM REYNOLDS AVERAGED NAVIER-STOKES
TOWARDS SMOOTHED PARTICLE HYDRODYNAMICS
Md Lokman Hosain
Akademisk avhandling
som för avläggande av teknologie doktorsexamen i energi- och miljöteknik vid

Akademin för ekonomi, samhälle och teknik kommer att offentligen försvaras
fredagen den 14 december 2018, 13.00 i Delta, Mälardalens högskola, Västerås.
Fakultetsopponent: Professor Moncho Gomez Gesteira, University of Vigo
Akademin för ekonomi, samhälle och teknik

Abstract
Optimal process control can significantly enhance energy efficiency of heating and cooling processes in
many industries. Process control systems typically rely on measurements and so called grey or black
box models that are based mainly on empirical correlations, in which the transient characteristics and
their influence on the control parameters are often ignored. A robust and reliable numerical technique,
to solve fluid flow and heat transfer problems, such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which
is capable of providing a detailed understanding of the multiple underlying physical phenomena,
is a necessity for optimization, decision support and diagnostics of complex industrial systems. The
thesis focuses on performing high-fidelity CFD simulations of a wide range of industrial applications
to highlight and understand the complex nonlinear coupling between the fluid flow and heat transfer.
The industrial applications studied in this thesis include cooling and heating processes in a hot rolling
steel plant, electric motors, heat exchangers and sloshing inside a ship carrying liquefied natural gas.
The goal is to identify the difficulties and challenges to be met when simulating these applications using
different CFD tools and methods and to discuss the strengths and limitations of the different tools.
The mesh-based finite volume CFD solver ANSYS Fluent is employed to acquire detailed and accurate
solutions of each application and to highlight challenges and limitations. The limitations of conventional
mesh-based CFD tools are exposed when attempting to resolve the multiple space and time scales
involved in large industrial processes. Therefore, a mesh-free particle method, smoothed particle
hydrodynamics (SPH) is identified in this thesis as an alternative to overcome some of the observed
limitations of the mesh-based solvers. SPH is introduced to simulate some of the selected cases to
understand the challenges and highlight the limitations. The thesis also contributes to the development
of SPH by implementing the energy equation into an open-source SPH flow solver to solve thermal
problems. The thesis highlights the current state of different CFD approaches towards complex
industrial applications and discusses the future development possibilities.
The overall observations, based on the industrial problems addressed in this thesis, can serve as decision
tool for industries to select an appropriate numerical method or tool for solving problems within the
presented context. The analysis and discussions also serve as a basis for further development and
research to shed light on the use of CFD simulations for improved process control, optimization and
diagnostics.
ISBN 978-91-7485-415-2
ISSN 1651-4238
Dedicated to my family
“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”
– George E. P. Box
Acknowledgements
The research in this PhD thesis was conducted at the Future Energy Center,
Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden, with financial support from The
Knowledge Foundation, SSAB, ABB, Mälarenergi and Eskilstuna Energi &
Miljö.
My first and foremost thanks go to my main supervisor Prof. Rebei Bel-
Fdhila for his continuous and invaluable guidance, support, suggestions and
inspiration throughout this thesis work.
I would like to acknowledge my co-supervisor Prof. Konstantinos Kyprian-
idis, Prof. Erik Dahlquist and Dr. Hailong Li for their guidance and support
during my thesis work. Many thanks to Prof. Emeritus Dan Loyd and Dr. Jan
Sandberg for reviewing this PhD thesis and providing valuable comments and
suggestions.
I am very thankful to Alex J. C. Crespo and Jose M. Domínguez from the
University of Vigo, Spain for hosting me and supporting me during the imple-
mentation of the thermal models in the open-source SPH code DualSPHysics.
My special thanks go to my colleagues and friends at my department for
many fruitful discussions.
Finally, I would like to show my deepest gratitude to my beloved wife
Nupur Akther; without her support this PhD would have been impossible. I
would also like to thank my sister-in-law Fahima Akther for all the mental
support and inspiration from the first day I arrived in Sweden. I would also
like to show gratitude towards my parents for all the inspiration I received
from them during my studies.
Md Lokman Hosain
October, 2018.
Västerås, Sweden.
Summary
The energy demand and environmental impacts from the industrial sector are
growing concerns within the European Union (EU) due to the need to comply
with the strict energy and environmental policy. Optimal process control can
significantly enhance energy efficiency of heating and cooling processes in
many industries. Process control systems typically rely on measurements and
so called grey or black box models that are based mainly on empirical correla-
tions, in which the transient characteristics and their influence on the control
parameters are often ignored. A robust and reliable high-fidelity numerical
technique, to solve fluid flow and heat transfer problems, such as computa-
tional fluid dynamics (CFD), which is capable of providing a detailed under-
standing of the multiple underlying physical phenomena, is a necessity for
optimization, decision support and diagnostics of complex industrial systems.
There are several different options within CFD methods and tools, however,
choosing the right numerical tool to solve advanced engineering problems,
and particularly in industrial research and development (R&D) is often diffi-
cult, and the consequences of choosing the wrong tool can be very costly. This
thesis deals with several energy-intensive complex industrial applications. The
goal is to identify the difficulties and challenges to be met when simulating
these applications using different CFD tools and methods and to discuss the
strengths and limitations of the different tools.
The thesis focuses on performing high-fidelity CFD simulations of a wide
range of industrial applications to highlight and understand the complex
nonlinear coupling between the fluid flow, heat transfer and other phenomena
inherent to the investigated processes, e.g. combustion or induced transients.
The industrial applications studied in this thesis include the runout table
(ROT) cooling process and slab reheating furnace in a hot rolling steel plant,
rotating machines such as electric motors and generators, heat exchangers and
sloshing inside a ship carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG). The mesh-based
finite volume CFD solver ANSYS Fluent is employed to acquire detailed
and accurate solutions of each application and to highlight challenges and
limitations. The limitations of conventional mesh-based CFD tools are
exposed when attempting to resolve the multiple space and time scales
involved in large industrial processes. They are not capable of addressing
the multiple jet impingement on a fast-moving strip that we encounter in
the ROT cooling process, and are often only partly successful, as in the
slab reheating furnace. Therefore, a mesh-free particle method, smoothed
particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is identified in this thesis as an alternative
to overcome some of the observed limitations of the mesh-based solvers.
SPH is introduced to simulate some of the selected cases to understand the
challenges and highlight the limitations.
The thesis also contributes to the development of SPH by implementing
the energy equation into an open-source SPH flow solver to solve thermal
problems. The comparison between the solutions from finite volume and SPH
methods presented in this thesis clearly indicates their strengths and limita-
tions for different types of problems. The thesis highlights the current state
of different CFD approaches towards complex industrial applications and dis-
cusses the future development possibilities.
The overall observations and the hypothesis, based on the industrial prob-
lems addressed in this thesis, can serve as decision tool for industries to select
an appropriate numerical method or tool for solving problems within the pre-
sented context. The analysis and discussions also serve as a basis for further
development and research to shed light on the use of real-time CFD simula-
tions for improved process control, optimization and diagnostics.
Sammanfattning
Energibehovet och miljöpåverkan från industrisektorn är växande problem

inom Europeiska unionen (EU) på grund av behovet av att följa den stränga
energi- och miljöpolitiken. Optimal processstyrning kan avsevärt förbättra
energieffektiviteten hos uppvärmnings- och kylprocesser i många industrier.
Styrsystem för processer baserar sig vanligtvis på mätningar och så kallade
gray- eller black-box modeller som huvudsakligen bygger på empiriska ko-
rrelationer, där de tillfälliga egenskaperna och deras påverkan på kontroll-
parametrarna ofta ignoreras. En robust och tillförlitlig numerisk teknik, för
att lösa fluidflöde och värmeöverföringsproblem, så som Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD), som kan ge en detaljerad förståelse för de olika underlig-
gande fysikaliska fenomenen, är en nödvändighet för optimering, beslutsstöd
och diagnostik av komplexa industriella system. Det finns flera olika alter-
nativ inom CFD-metoder och verktyg, men det är ofta svårt att välja rätt nu-
meriska verktyg för att lösa avancerade tekniska problem, särskilt inom indus-
triell forskning och utveckling, och konsekvenserna av att välja fel verktyg
kan vara mycket kostsamma. Avhandlingen behandlar flera energiintensiva
komplexa industriella applikationer. Målet är att identifiera de svårigheter och
utmaningar som behöver överkommas när man simulerar dessa applikationer
med hjälp av olika CFD-verktyg och -metoder och att diskutera styrkor och
begränsningar hos de olika verktygen.
Avhandlingen fokuserar på att utföra CFD-simuleringar för ett brett
spektrum av industriella applikationer för att belysa och förstå den komplexa
olinjära kopplingen mellan fluidflöde, värmeöverföring och andra inneboende
fenomen för de undersökta processerna, t.ex. förbränning eller inducerade
transienter. De industriella applikationer som studeras i denna avhandling
inkluderar kylning av tunna stålplåtar och uppvärmning av stålskivor vid
varmvalsning inom stålindustrin, roterande maskiner som elmotorer och
generatorer, värmeväxlare och skvalpning i tankar inuti transportfartyg
för flytande naturgas. Den nätbaserade CFD-lösaren ANSYS Fluent har
använts för att få detaljerade och noggranna lösningar för varje applikation
och för att identifiera utmaningarna och begränsningarna. Begränsningarna
hos konventionella nätbaserade CFD-verktyg avslöjas när lösningar söks
för multipla rums- och tidsskalor som ingår i stora industriella processer.
De är inte kapabla att hantera de multipla jetstrålar på en rörlig stålplåt
som vi stöter på i kylprocessen av stålplåtar och ofta är de endast delvis
framgångsrika, till exempel för industriella värmeugnar. Därför identifieras
en nätfri partikelmetod, Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) i denna
avhandling som ett alternativ för att övervinna några av de observerade
begränsningarna hos nätbaserade lösare. SPH används i denna avhandling för
att simulera några av de utvalda fallen för att förstå utmaningarna och belysa
begränsningarna.
Avhandlingen bidrar också till utvecklingen av SPH genom att
implementera energiekvationen i en SPH-flödeslösare, med öppen källkod,
för att kunna lösa termiska problem. Jämförelsen mellan lösningarna från
nätbaserade och SPH metoder som presenteras i denna avhandling visar
tydligt på metodernas styrka och begränsningar för olika typer av problem.
Avhandlingen belyser nuvarande CFD-metoder för komplexa industriella
applikationer och diskuterar framtida utvecklingsmöjligheter.
De övergripande observationerna och hypotesen, baserad på de industriella
problem som behandlas i denna avhandling, kan fungera som beslutsverktyg
för industrier i att välja en lämplig numeriskt metod eller verktyg för att lösa
problem inom den presenterade kontexten. Analysen och diskussionerna utgör
också grunden för vidareutveckling och forskning för att belysa användningen
av CFD-simuleringar i realtid för förbättrad processkontroll, optimering och
diagnostik.
List of Papers
This thesis is based on the following papers, which are referred to in the text
by their Roman numerals:
I Hosain, M. L., Bel Fdhila, R., Daneryd, A., 2015. Heat transfer by liquid
jets impinging on a hot flat surface. Appl. Energy 164, 934-943.
II Hosain, M. L., Bel Fdhila, R., Sand, U., Engdahl, J., Dahlquist, E., Li,
H., 2016. CFD Modeling of Real Scale Slab Reheating Furnace, in:
12th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and
Thermodynamics, HEFAT2016.
III Hosain, M. L., Fdhila, R.B., 2015. Literature Review of Accelerated
CFD Simulation Methods towards Online Application. Energy Procedia
75, 3307-3314.
IV Hosain, M. L., Bel Fdhila, R., Rönnberg, K., 2017a. Taylor-Couette
flow and transient heat transfer inside the annulus air-gap of rotating
electrical machines. Appl. Energy 207, 624-633.
V Hosain, M. L., Fdhila, R.B., 2017. Air-Gap Heat Transfer in Rotating
Electrical Machines: A Parametric Study. Energy Procedia 142, 4176-
4181.
VI Hosain, M. L., Rönnberg, K., Bel Fdhila, R., 2017b. Air Flow inside
Rotating Electrical Machines: A Comparison between Finite Volume
and SPH Method. NAFEMS World Congress, NWC17.
VII Hosain, M. L., Sand, U., Fdhila, R.B., 2018. Numerical Investigation of
Liquid Sloshing in Carrier Ship Fuel Tanks. IFAC-PapersOnLine 51-2,
583-588.
VIII Hosain, M. L., Bel-Fdhila, R., Kyprianidis, K., 2018. Simulation and
validation of flow and heat transfer in an infinite mini-channel using
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics. Energy Procedia 00, 00-00. (Ac-
cepted for publication)
IX Hosain, M.L., Domínguez, J.M., Crespo, A.J.C., Bel-Fdhila, R., Kypri-
anidis, K., 2018. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics modeling of tran-
sient conduction and convection heat transfer. (Journal Manuscript)
Reprints were made with permission from the publishers.

Part of this thesis (Paper I, II and III) was previously included in the Licentiate
thesis “Towards Accelerated Simulations for Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer of
Large Industrial Processes” (Hosain, 2016).
Contents
Page
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Research challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Research framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 Objective of the thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.5 Contributions to knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.6 Thesis outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2 Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.1 Modelling approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 Different approaches in CFD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.2.1 Governing equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.2.2 Energy transport equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.2.3 Mixture fraction transport equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3 Mathematical Models for RANS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3.1 RANS transport equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3.2 Turbulence transport equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.3.3 Energy transport equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.3.4 Volume of Fluid (RANS-VOF) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.4 Mathematical Models for SPH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.4.1 SPH form of the governing equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.4.2 Pressure formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.4.3 Boundary conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.4.4 SPH thermal implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.5 Industrial applications addressed using RANS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.5.1 Hot rolling process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.5.2 Rotating machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.5.3 LNG vessels in carrier ships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.6 Industrial applications addressed using SPH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.6.1 Rotating machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.6.2 LNG vessel in carrier ship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.6.3 Transient heat conduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.6.4 Transient heat convection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4 Results and discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.1 Reynold Averaged Navier-Stokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.1.1 Hot rolling process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.2 Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.2.2 LNG vessel in carrier ships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.2.3 Heat conduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.2.4 Heat convection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.3 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
5 Summary of appended papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
7 Future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
List of Tables
Page
1.1 Relation between the papers and the research questions . . . . . 5
3.1 Mesh information for the FVM models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

3.2 Tank sloshing case specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.3 Thermal properties of Aluminium and Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
List of Figures
Page
Figure 1.1: Schematic showing the relationship between the research

topics and the papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Figure 2.1: Hierarchical classification of methods in CFD . . . . . . . . . . 11
Figure 3.1: Methodological approach for CFD simulations . . . . . . . . . . 16

Figure 3.2: Different approaches of discretization for CFD simulations . . 16
Figure 3.3: Hot rolling process in steel industries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Figure 3.4: Single impinging jet 3D model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Figure 3.5: Multiple impinging jet 3D model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Figure 3.6: Mesh for impinging jet cooling model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Figure 3.7: Slab re-heating furnace in 2D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Figure 3.8: Furnace model with boundary conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Figure 3.9: Mesh for the furnace model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Figure 3.10: Rotating machine model with boundary conditions . . . . . . . 30
Figure 3.11: Mesh for the rotating machine model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Figure 3.12: LNG Tank model with dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Figure 3.13: SPH models for the rotating machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Figure 3.14: Heat conduction model with discretization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Figure 3.15: Mini-channel with boundary conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Figure 3.16: Numerical discretization for the mini-channel . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Figure 3.17: Tube bank heat exchanger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Figure 3.18: Numerical discretization for the tube bank heat exchanger
model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Figure 4.1: Schematic of impinging jet cooling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 39

Figure 4.2: Interface of water jet for different inlet velocities . . . . . . ... 40
Figure 4.3: Heat transfer coefficient for different inlet velocities . . . . ... 41
Figure 4.4: Comparison of simulated jet diameter with correlation . . ... 41
Figure 4.5: Temperature field for single and multiple jets . . . . . . . . ... 42
Figure 4.6: Water splashing due to the interaction between jets . . . . ... 42
Figure 4.7: Path lines of velocity inside the furnace . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 43
Figure 4.8: Iso-surfaces of mass fraction and temperature . . . . . . . . ... 44
Figure 4.9: Volume average temperature of the steel slab . . . . . . . . ... 44
Figure 4.10: Velocity vectors on cross-section planes inside the motor ... 45
Figure 4.11: Average velocity profile in the air-gap of the motor . . . . . . . 46
Figure 4.12: Flow and temperature distribution in the air-gap of the motor 46
Figure 4.13: Temperature contour on internal surface of the stator . . . . . . 46
Figure 4.14: Heat transfer coefficient on the rotor surface . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Figure 4.15: Air velocity profile inside the motor from FVM and SPH model 48
Figure 4.16: Air velocity contours close to the motor wafters . . . . . . . . . . 48
Figure 4.17: Velocity profile inside the air-gap of the motor: FVM vs. SPH 49
Figure 4.18: Visualization of tank sloshing at different time instances . . . . 50
Figure 4.19: Simulated and measured Pressure on the tank wall . . . . . . . 50
Figure 4.20: Simulated forces on the tank wall: FVM vs. SPH . . . . . . . . . 51
Figure 4.21: Simulated and Froude-scaled forces on the tank wall . . . . . . 51
Figure 4.22: Temperature contour of heat conduction in aluminium . . . . . 52
Figure 4.23: Temperature profiles of heat conduction in aluminium . . . . . 52
Figure 4.24: Temperature contour of heat conduction in water . . . . . . . . 53
Figure 4.25: Temperature profiles of heat conduction in water . . . . . . . . . 53
Figure 4.26: Velocity and temperature contour in the mini-channel . . . . . . 54
Figure 4.27: Temperature profiles in the mini-channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Figure 4.28: Velocity and temperature field in the tube bank heat exchanger 55
Figure 4.29: Temperature profiles in the tube bank heat exchanger . . . . . . 56
Nomenclature
Abbreviations
2D Two dimensions
3D Three dimensions
BC Boundary Condition
CFD Computational Fluid Dynamics
CPU Central Processing Unit
CUDA Compute Unified Device Architecture
DBC Dynamic Boundary Condition
DNS Direct Numerical Simulation
EU European Union
FDM Finite Difference Method
FEM Finite Element Method
FFD Fast Fluid Dynamics
FMM Fast Multipole Methods
FVM Finite Volume Method
GHG Greenhouse Gas
GPGPU General Purpose Graphic Processing Unit
HPC High Performance Computing
LBM Lattice Boltzmann Method
LES Large Eddie Simulation
LNG Liquefied Natural Gas
LPG Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Propane)

MAC Marker And Cell
MPI Message Passing Interface
OpenCL Open Computing Language
OpenMP Open Multi Processing
POD Proper Orthogonal Decomposition
R&D Research and Development
RANS Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes equations
ROM Reduced Order Modelling
ROT Runout Table
RQ Research Question
SPH Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics
SVD Singular Value Decomposition
TC Thermocouple
VOF Volume of Fluid
Symbols
C Constant [-]
c Speed of sound [m/s]
cp Specific heat capacity [J/(Kg.K)]
Cr Courant number [-]
d Nozzle diameter [m]
D(Z) Jet diameter [m]
Dh = 2g p , Hydraulic diameter [m]
Dmin Minimum D(Z) [m]
dp Particle spacing [m]
E Total energy [J]
F Force [N]
f Mixture fraction [-]
fr Frequency [1/s]
g Gravitation acceleration [m/s2 ]
Gk Generation of turbulence kinetic energy due to the mean velocity

gradients [-]
gp Air-gap width between the rotor and the stator [m]
H Height of tank [m]
h Smoothing radius [m]
h(r) Liquid film thickness [m]
H1 Height of initial water level [m]
ht Heat transfer coefficient [W/m2 K]
k Turbulence kinetic energy [m2 /s2 ]
L Characteristic length [m]
Nu Nusselt number [-]
Nu0 Nusselt number at stagnation point [-]

ht .d
Nud = , Nusselt number based on d [-]
κ
ht .Dh
NuDh = , Nusselt number based on hydraulic diameter [-]
κ
p Pressure [Pa]
Pr Prandtl number [-]
q00 Heat flux [W/m2 ]
r Radial position [m]
r1 Radius of region I [m]
r2 Radius of region II [m]
r3 Radius of region III [m]
ra Vector position of particle a [m]
rb Vector position of particle b [m]
rp Distance between two particles [m]

uL
Re = , Reynolds number [-]
ν
S Source term [J]
S1 , S2 Sensor [-]
T Temperature [◦ C]
t Time [s]
T1 Time for a full roll motion [s]
u Velocity [m/s]
u∗ Friction velocity at the nearest wall [m/s]
u0 Fluctuating velocity [m/s]
Uf Fluid velocity at inlet [m/s]
W Smoothing kernel function [-]
w Width of tank [m]
x Cartesian axis direction [m]
x1 Distance of S1 from bottom wall of the tank [m]
x2 Distance of S2 from left wall of the tank [m]
y Distance to the nearest wall [m]

u∗ y
y+ = , Non-dimensional wall distance [-]
ν
YM Contribution of the fluctuating dilatation in compressible turbu-
lence to the overall dissipation rate [-]
Z Distance downward from the nozzle [m]
z0 Distance between nozzle and strip [m]
Zi Elemental mass fraction for element i [-]
Special characters
δ Hydrodynamic boundary layer thickness [m]
δT Thermal boundary layer thickness [m]
δi j Kronecker delta [-]

ε Turbulence dissipation rate [m2 /s3 ]
γ Isotropic constant [-]
κ Thermal conductivity [W/m.K]
λ Scaling factor [-]
µ Dynamic viscosity [kg/m.s]
ν Kinematic viscosity [m2 /s]
ω Specific rate of dissipation [1/s]
φ Viscous dissipation [-]
ρ Density [kg/m3 ]
ρ0 Reference density [kg/m3 ]
τi j Stress tensor [-]
θ Rolling angle [degree]
Subscripts
ε Turbulence dissipation rate
∞ Free stream fluid
µ Dynamic viscosity
a Particle a
b Particle b
ef f Effective
f Fluid
f uel Fuel stream inlet
g Gas
h Heat
k Turbulence kinetic energy
m Mass
min Minimum
ox Oxidizer stream inlet
t Turbulent
1. Introduction
This chapter presents the research background, research questions formulated

based on the research gaps, the research framework, objective of the thesis
and the contributions to knowledge. The relationship between the research
topics and the papers are also presented. This chapter includes the thesis out-
line and the limitations of the thesis.
1.1 Background
Industrial processes and products, e.g. the runout table (ROT) cooling process
in hot rolling steel industries (Cho et al., 2008; Mishra et al., 2015; Vakili,
2011), industrial furnaces and boilers (Dong, 2000; Stopford, 2002; Zhang et
al., 2010), microchips and power electronics in high voltage products (Soon
& Ghazali, 2008; Subramanyam & Crowe, 2000; Winder, 2004), motors and
generators (de Almeida et al., 2012; Mecrow & Jack, 2008; Saidur, 2010),
and marine applications (Johnson & Andersson, 2016; Vergara et al., 2012;
Winebrake et al., 2007) are recognized as some of the major intensive energy
consumers in these industries. Many of these processes often rely heavily on
non-renewable energy resources. For instance, in hot rolling steel industries,
large steel slabs are typically heated in furnaces in which fossil fuels like liq-
uefied petroleum gas (LPG) are used as a primary source for combustion. The
steel sector is an important and leading business area in many European Union
(EU) countries and has been identified as critical owing to the large amount of
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Pardo et al., 2012). Another rapidly grow-
ing sector contributing significantly to high energy consumption is electric
motors. Electric motors consume half of all electricity in industrialized coun-
tries (de Almeida et al., 2012). Within the EU, they consume about 60-80% of
energy used in the industrial sector and about 35% in the commercial sector.
EU regulations and policies on energy and environment (“EU Commission
Regulation (EC) No 640/2009”, 2009) are targeting a strong reduction in the
impact of GHG emissions on the environment (Patyk, 2013; Saidur, 2010).
Optimizing existing products and improving process control for industries
has a necessity to reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions. Energy-
intensive processes or products often involve a wide range of complex multi-
physical phenomena that a control system tends to govern towards optimum
operations. The physical phenomena in the industrial processes and products
1
discussed in this thesis involve turbulent flow and heat transfer. The detailed
dynamic behavior of complex fluid flow and heat transfer and their influence
on the control parameters are generally not taken into account in control sys-
tems that rely on measurements, black box models or empirical correlations.
For example, in the re-heating furnace in a steel plant (Hosain et al., 2016),
large slabs inside the furnace are heated to about 1250 ◦ C by following a
predetermined temperature profile. The heating profile must be adhered to in
order to achieve a specified quality of steel. The pre-heating zone in the fur-
nace is roughly 20 m long, 11 m wide and 10 m high, and between 6 and 10
thermocouples are placed very close to the roof and the side walls to measure
the gas temperature. The measurements are then used in the control system to
estimate the surface and average temperature of the slabs. The question is, how
reliable and efficient can the control system be, given that it mostly relies on
a data-fitting approach based on a few measurement points? The best choice
would be to directly measure the surface temperature of the slab; however, this
is currently impossible owing to the limitations of the available thermocouple
technologies.
Process control, such as the system described above, can be improved by
employing more advanced models and methods such as computational fluid
dynamics (CFD), which are capable of providing all the necessary input de-
tails and features. CFD is a very robust tool for analyzing the flow and heat
transfer accurately. It can provide detailed insight into processes in which
complex and fully non-linear phenomena may be present. High fidelity sim-
ulations based on CFD can be used to evaluate the current performance, im-
prove online control and help optimize operation of industrial processes. How-
ever, it is often very challenging to perform CFD simulations for large indus-
trial processes and complex products. This is due to the existence of multiple
space and time scales in the industrial processes and the limitations of the nu-
merical techniques. In conventional CFD methods, the numerical domain is
discretized using mesh elements, and the accuracy of the model is completely
dependent on the quality of the mesh and the physical, chemical and me-
chanical phenomena involved. The mesh generation is often the most impor-
tant and time-consuming pre-processing step for the mesh-based CFD solver.
Moreover, the mesh needs to be locally refined in order to resolve interesting
local features. The presence of microscale features (e.g. boiling, combustion)
and macroscale features (e.g. burners in the furnace or water jets at the ROT
cooling process in industrial processes make it very challenging to generate a
suitable mesh and perform simulation within a useful timeframe for the results
to be used in the design steps or in online control. In many cases, a very coarse
mesh is applied to simulate the whole process to obtain an overall flow pattern;
however, this approach sacrifices accuracy by neglecting small-scale features
(Huang et al., 2008; J. G. Kim et al., 2000; Morgado et al., 2015). Despite sev-
eral limitations, CFD simulations are still commonly used to model, analyze
and improve industrial flow and heat transfer applications. CFD simulations
2
can also be used in the online control tool by running the simulations in real
time, considering coarse discretization, where the relative effect of different
control parameters on the process performance, rather than absolute accuracy,
is the main concern. Another possibility may be to create a lookup table from
a series of offline CFD simulations, and use the lookup table to control the
process. A further option is to simplify the process geometry by applying ap-
propriate boundary conditions when possible, and simulate a small section of
the process to get an accurate solution (Hosain et al., 2016).
Recent technological development of parallel computing devices has sig-
nificantly improved the numerical performance of conventional mesh-based
CFD solvers. Despite this improved performance, simulating the whole pro-
cess in detail by resolving the local flows using mesh-based commercial CFD
solvers remains beyond reach. Mesh-free CFD methods based on simplified
physics can be an alternative for overcoming some of the limitations of con-
ventional mesh-based solvers. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) has
been identified as a potential mesh-free particle-based method in this thesis,
mainly due to its mesh-free feature, flexibility, fast-solving capability and
good support for visualization. The attraction of SPH is that it provides the
opportunity for easy balancing of the speed and accuracy of the simulation,
which is a very big advantage from the online control perspective. However,
the main idea in this thesis is not to replace mesh-based methods with mesh-
free particle-based methods, but to complement them, or choose the best meth-
ods to fit the purpose. The theories behind the mesh-based and the mesh-free
methods employed in this thesis are explained in detail in chapter 3.
1.2 Research challenges

The most popular methodology used to address industrial applications using
CFD simulations uses the mesh-based finite volume method (FVM), where
the Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations are discretized and
solved in commercial or open-source packages. This is mainly because of the
well-established knowledge of the approach and its applicability to a wide
range of engineering fields. FVM-based CFD solvers are very robust for solv-
ing complex problems related to multiphase flows and heat transfer. They are
mesh-based solvers and have been widely used to solve very complex prob-
lems for several decades. However, solving industrial problems involving high
deformation, multiple solid movements with strong and complex fluid–solid
or fluid–fluid interactions remains a big challenge for such solvers and the
overall approach. Industrial problems with fluid–fluid or fluid–solid interac-
tions require extra care during the mesh generation phase. The limitations,
difficulties and challenges in solving complex industrial problems have not
been rigorously discussed in the literature.
3
Mesh-based methods are used successfully to simulate large processes such
as full 3D furnaces (Huang et al., 2008; Marino et al., 2002; Morgado et al.,
2015). However, in these cases the detailed combustion chemistry and the lo-
cal geometrical details are ignored. To date, no 3D simulations have been pub-
lished for industrial processes based on FVM that cover both microscale and
macroscale features. Particle-based methods such as SPH (Auer, 2008; Krog
& Elster, 2012) are gradually emerging and gaining popularity in the CFD
community because of their fast solving capability, flexibility and simplicity.
The SPH approach is currently being widely used for visual fluid and ther-
mal effects in films and video games, where accuracy is not very important.
Recent developments in SPH towards engineering applications, the level of
accuracy achieved and the diversity of its applicability (J. Monaghan, 2012)
have opened doors for new types of industrial applications (Shadloo et al.,
2016). The SPH user community is small and growing, thus the propagation
and development of this method towards industrial applications has been slow
compared to other, conventional methods. The types of industrial applications
of interest in this thesis have not been previously addressed by the SPH user
community. Therefore, the limitations and challenges of SPH for many in-
dustrial applications are still unknown due to lack of study. As mentioned
earlier, the learning curve is one of the limiting factors for use of emerging
methods such as SPH for industry. Recently, in their SPH studies, Shadloo et
al. (Shadloo et al., 2016) demonstrated that its diverse applicability (J. Mon-
aghan, 2012) has a lot to offer for industrial applications. Special attention and
substantial efforts are required from scientists and R&D engineers to enlarge
the capability of SPH for new types of applications. Furthermore, comparisons
between different methods aimed at selecting the right method for a particular
application needs to be addressed.
Based on the research challenges and the knowledge gap discussed above,
three research questions (RQ) are formulated in this thesis:
• RQ1
What are the limitations of RANS when used to simulate complex in-
dustrial applications?
• RQ2
Under what circumstances can SPH replace or complement RANS?
• RQ3
What is the potential of using SPH in on-line control tools?
The research questions are formulated in a general manner, however, the

conclusions are based on selected applications within the research framework
(section 1.3). The research questions are discussed in detail together with con-
cluding remarks in section 4.3.
4
Table 1.1: Relation between the papers
and the research questions
Research question Papers

RQ1 I,II,III,IV,V
RQ2 VI,VII,VIII,IX
RQ3 VII
Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer Simulations for

Complex Industrial Applications
Eulerian Vs. Lagrangian
FVM SPH
Paper I Cooling at ROT
Slab reheating
Paper II
furnace
Literature review Paper III
Rotating machines:
Paper IV
Taylor-couette flow
Rotating machines:
Paper V
Parametric analysis
Rotating machines: FVM vs. SPH Paper VI
Liquid sloshing in Tank Paper VII
Heat transfer in mini-channels Paper VIII
SPH Thermal model Paper IX
Figure 1.1: Schematic showing the relationship between the research topics and the
papers
1.3 Research framework

The work in this thesis mainly aims to use CFD to solve energy-intensive com-
plex industrial processes, where flow and heat transfer problems are critical.
The work is performed in tight collaboration with several industries to define
the current challenging cases that need to be studied. The industrial applica-
5
tions studied in this thesis are the ROT cooling process, presented in Paper I,
the slab reheating furnace in hot rolling steel plant, investigated in Paper II,
the electric motor, studied in Papers IV, V and VI, and the tank sloshing in
a LNG carrier ship, presented in Paper VII. The studied problems cover both
single and multi-phase flows. The cases also cover heat transfer in the form
of conduction, convection and radiation, as well as combustion. In the first
stage of this work, the industrial applications are solved using the Eulerian
mesh-based finite volume RANS CFD solver ANSYS Fluent. This task was
performed to underline the limitations of RANS and highlight the challenges
of simulating large and complex industrial applications. To overcome some of
the observed limitations of RANS, the search is directed towards finding alter-
native methods that are more flexible and faster compared to RANS methods
(Paper III).
In the later stage of this work, the Lagrangian particle method SPH is iden-
tified as a potential alternative to compensate for some of the weaknesses of
RANS methods. To evaluate the applicability and the performance of the SPH
solver for industrial problems, the rotating machine (Paper VI) and tank slosh-
ing (Paper VII) cases are simulated to benchmark the SPH solutions with the
solutions from the finite volume solver.
Finally, the research work is directed towards SPH development, where the
energy equation is implemented in the open-source SPH code DualSPHysics
to simulate thermal problems. To validate the thermal implementation in Du-
alSPHysics and to illustrate its accuracy, several laminar heat transfer cases,
heat transfer in infinite mini-channel (Paper VIII) and heat transfer in heat
exchangers (Paper IX) are simulated.
The included scientific papers (Paper I - Paper IX) are briefly summarized
in chapter 5. The appended papers can be linked to the research questions
presented in section 1.2 and to the research topic as illustrated in Table 1.1
and Figure 1.1, respectively. The analysis presented in this thesis is limited to
the studied cases presented in the included papers. The research questions are
answered in this thesis mainly based on the observations and hypotheses made
in the appended papers. The answers to the research questions are presented
in section 4.3 in the form of a discussion, which is limited to the studied cases.
However, the observations illustrated in this thesis may serve as a decision tool
to select a suitable CFD approach to deal with the type of industrial problems
analyzed within this framework.
1.4 Objective of the thesis

The overall objective of the thesis is to perform high fidelity fluid flow and
heat transfer simulations for several industrial processes and products to
better understand the underlying physical phenomena, to identify a few
energy-intensive processes and products to numerically investigate in detail
6
using the most popular CFD methods in commercial packages, and highlight
the challenges and their limitations. Another key objective of this thesis is to
identify alternative CFD methods that are suitable and sufficiently flexible for
use in different industrial applications, to overcome some of the limitations
of conventional CFD methods. Furthermore, the thesis aims to discuss the
potential use of CFD simulation from a real-time application perspective and
shed light on online process control using high fidelity simulations.
The goals of the thesis can be explicitly described by the following points:
• To build CFD models for selected energy-intensive processes and

products related to multiphase flow, free-surface flow and heat transfer.
Moreover, to validate the results using analytical solutions or available
data from published literature (RQ1).
• To discuss the usefulness and limitations of the methods commonly

used in commercial CFD packages (RQ1).
• To find alternative methods that can overcome the underlying limita-

tions of RANS methods for industrial applications (RQ1).
• To introduce SPH for industrial flow and heat transfer simulations and
discuss the current limitations (RQ2).
• To discuss the type of applications where SPH can be used for online
process control purposes (RQ3).
1.5 Contributions to knowledge

The main contribution of this doctoral research is towards the industrial
applications. The thesis also contributes to scientific knowledge from both
the fundamental and applied perspective. Selected energy intensive industrial
processes are investigated using high fidelity CFD simulations, the difficulties
and challenges are highlighted and possible ways to overcome these are
discussed.
The overall contribution of the thesis can be briefly summarized as follows:
• Performing high fidelity simulations of selected energy-intensive pro-

cesses and products to provide detailed insight to enhance the under-
standing of the underlying complex fluid flow and heat transfer phe-
nomena. The simulated applications involve ROT cooling in hot rolling
7
steel industries, slab re-heating furnace, sloshing dynamics in carrier
ships fuel tanks, rotating machines, and heat exchangers.
• Discovering unknown phenomena involved in the studied industrial ap-

plications and presenting hypotheses. Discussing and highlighting the
difficulties and challenges involved in simulating such industrial pro-
cesses using different CFD approaches.
• Performing sensitivity analysis to evaluate the impact of different con-

trol parameters on thermal performance.
• Providing the state of the art by reviewing literature relevant to the stud-
ied topics in this thesis. Performing a literature survey and classifying
available CFD methods applicable to different types of industrial and
engineering applications from a real-time simulation perspective.
• Introducing and using SPH for industrial flow and heat transfer ap-
plications and evaluating its potential usefulness to thermal problems.
Discussing the challenges and limitations of SPH for industrial ther-
mal simulations and indicating future directions based on these obser-
vations.
• Implementing SPH thermal equations in an open-source SPH-based

CFD solver, DualSPHysics, using C++. Using and validating the SPH
thermal implementation by solving thermal problems related to heat
conduction and convection. Discussing the limitations of SPH for ther-
mal problems. Highlighting the future challenges to simulating complex
industrial flow and heat transfer.
1.6 Thesis outline

This thesis is written based on the appended papers and contains the following
chapters:
Chapter 1 Introduction
This chapter presents the research background, research questions for-
mulated based on the research gaps, the research framework, objective
of the thesis and the contributions to knowledge. The relationship be-
tween the research topics and the papers are also presented. This chapter
includes the thesis outline and the limitations of the thesis.
Chapter 2 Literature review

This chapter presents a literature review in the field of multiphase flows
and heat transfer to illuminate the state of the art of the selected in-
8
dustrial applications. It also presents a literature review on available
advanced CFD methods.
Chapter 3 Methodology
This chapter presents a detailed explanation of the overall methodology
to address an industrial application using the CFD approach. All the
numerical models for the simulated cases and the governing equations
are presented.
Chapter 4 Results and discussion
This chapter presents the key results from the performed simulations
and provides a detailed discussion of the studied topic while answering
the research questions.
Chapter 5 Summary of appended papers
This chapter summarizes the included papers and the author’s contribu-
tion to the papers.
Chapter 6 Conclusions
This chapter presents the major conclusions of the thesis.
Chapter 7 Future work
This chapter suggests the potential future direction of the research topic
presented in this thesis.
9
2. Literature Review
This chapter presents a literature review in the field of multiphase flows

and heat transfer to illuminate the state of the art of the selected industrial
applications. It also presents a literature review on available advanced CFD
methods.
CFD simulation techniques have been used to solve a variety of industrial

fluid flow and heat transfer problems for several decades. The area of inter-
est of the research presented in this thesis is to solve engineering problems
related to single-phase and multiphase flows and heat transfer. The literature
review presented in this chapter mainly covers literature in this context, while
providing a broad perspective on applicability of different CFD methods to
industrial applications.
The extent of applicability of CFD simulations to industrial applications is
completely dependent on the physical phenomena and the time scale associ-
ated with the application. Industrial processes and products are often so large
and complex that it becomes too difficult to solve them numerically using CFD
techniques. The recent developments of high-performance computing (HPC)
resources have revolutionized the usage of CFD simulation for large and com-
plex problems. Today, the use of HPC with supercomputers is the most com-
mon approach for CFD engineers. The algorithms involved in the methods are
usually parallelized so that simulations can be run in parallel using supercom-
puters with multicore architecture. Nevertheless, simulating entire processes
such as ROT cooling or the furnace using CFD while resolving microscopic
features like boiling and combustion, remains unapproachable with currently
available computing capabilities. The only way to overcome this limitation at
present is to simplify the models and use methods with simplified physics.
This thesis explores the applicability, capability and efficiency of different
CFD methods for complex engineering problems from a perspective of in-
creasing the speed of simulation.
There are two classes of CFD methods; these are the Eulerian approach and
Lagrangian approach. In the Lagrangian approach, fluid is represented by a set
containing a large number of particles that possess properties such as mass, ve-
locity and temperature. All the particles are then traced along the flow and the
time evolution of different properties is calculated based on the interactions
between the particles. In the Eulerian approach, the fluid is represented by us-
ing control volumes as mesh elements whose coordinates are fixed. The fluid
10
flowing through these control volumes is observed and fluxes are calculated
to measure the rate of change of properties such as velocity and temperature.
Methods developed based on the Eulerian approach are called mesh-based
methods, and methods developed based on the Lagrangian approach are called
mesh-free particle methods. Both classes of methods have pros and cons. The
mesh-free characteristic is one of the biggest advantages of Lagrangian CFD
methods for R&D engineers, as meshing is the most time-consuming and chal-
lenging pre-processing phase for Eulerian CFD solvers. In recent decades,
researchers have developed methods that combine Lagrangian and Eulerian
frameworks to complement the weaknesses of both classes. These methods
are classified as hybrid methods (Figure 2.1).
● Finite Volume Method (FVM)

Conventional ● Finite Difference Method (FDM)
Methods ● Finite Element Method (FEM)
● Spectral Methods
● Reduced Order Modeling (ROM)

Mesh ▪Proper Orthogonal Decomposition(POD)
Based
Methods ▪ Singular value Decomposition (SVD)
● Marker & Cell (MAC)
CFD
● Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics(SPH)
Advanced ● Fast Multipole Method (FMM)
Mesh free
Numerical ● Method of Fundamental Solutions (MFS)
Methods methods
● Finite Pointset Method (FPM)
● Moving Particle Semi-Implicit Method(MPS)
● Fast Fluid Dynamics (FFD)

Hybrid ● Particle in Cell Method (PIC)
Accelerated
Methods methods ● Vortex in Cell Method (VIC)
● Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM)
● MPI
CPU ● OpenMP
● Cloud Computing
● CUDA
Hardware Parallel
Techniques programming GPGPU ● OpenCL
● Cloud Computing
CPU+GPGPU
Figure 2.1: Hierarchical classification of methods in CFD (Hosain & Fdhila, 2015)
Mesh-based conventional methods are the most well-established and pop-

ular methods, and are mature enough to handle complex problems with high
accuracy. These methods are extremely reliable, however they come at a very
high numerical cost, which limits their use in fluid flow and heat transfer
simulations for large industrial processes. Therefore, simulations using these
methods are only used for small-scale problems (Mazumder & Lu, 2013).
11
Large industrial processes have also been addressed using FVM in Huang et
al.(Huang et al., 2008) and Morgado et al.(Morgado et al., 2015); however,
these have performed poorly from a speed perspective. Mathematically sim-
plified mesh-based methods like reduced order modelling (ROM) (Lappo &
Habashi, 2009; Lieu et al., 2006) can, in many cases, provide enhanced numer-
ical performance, and enable simulations to be performed in real time. How-
ever, the accuracy is usually reduced in such applications. Therefore, when
using mesh-based methods, one needs to balance the speed and accuracy of
the simulations. The main drawback, however, is that the entire workflow, in-
cluding mesh generation, needs to be repeated to tune the accuracy and speed,
making this a less user-friendly option for R&D engineers.
On the other hand, mesh-free particle-based CFD methods have several ad-
vantages over mesh-based solvers. Due to the inherent Lagrangian properties,
the convection of the particles happens due to the interaction forces, therefore
the equations involved in this approach are simpler than those in mesh-based
solvers. The most popular method in this class is the SPH method, mainly
due to its simplicity, flexibility and promising performance. The SPH method
produces satisfactory results for problems involving disruptive free surfaces,
multiple fluids, elastic fracture, thermal matter diffusion and chemical precip-
itation (J. Monaghan, 2012). It can also be applied to physiological problems
such as soft tissue and blood flows. SPH is known to be robust for free-surface
and multiphase flows (J. Monaghan, 2012; Randles et al., 2016). This is be-
cause, for free-surface flow, such as the impinging jet problem and sloshing in
a tank, there is no need to solve the two phases (air and water) to identify the
interface between them. The surface tension of the water itself creates the air–
water interface. SPH has recently been used to solve a wide range of industrial
applications (Shadloo et al., 2016). The recent diverse applications (Shadloo
et al., 2016) of SPH include mainly aerospace (Ortiz et al., 2004; Siemann &
Groenenboom, 2014), car and automotive (Barcarolo et al., 2014; Oger et al.,
2009), energy production, e.g. marine (Baeten, 2009; Hosain et al., 2018), oil
and gas (Violeau et al., 2007), hydropower (Manenti & Ruol, 2008; Tomas-
icchio et al., 2012) and industrial processing, for example, casting, grinding,
high speed cutting, mixing and separation, friction stir welding, solidifica-
tion, oxidation, droplet breakup and spray coating (Shadloo et al., 2016). The
SPH method is not a suitable choice for problems with high Reynolds number
turbulent flows, steady flows, slow dynamic flows and flow without complex
interfaces (Shadloo et al., 2016). This is because the SPH method still requires
development in several modules, e.g. robust boundary conditions and turbu-
lence. The SPH method is still far from being well-established enough to re-
place the mesh-based FVM solver. However, in its current state, the flexibility
of SPH has a lot to offer the industrial applications.
Hybrid methods are also of interest for free-surface flows, multiphase flows
and heat transfer simulations. In recent developments, researchers have been
trying to combine different methods to develop new methods that combine
12
benefits from both Eulerian and Lagrangian frames of reference. An example
of these is fast fluid dynamics (FFD), as used by Zuo and Chen (Zuo & Chen,
2009, 2010) to simulate air flow inside buildings in real time. Another method,
Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM), solves the Boltzmann equation instead
of the Navier Stokes equations and is popular for thermal problems. Geveler
et al.(Geveler, Ribbrock, Mallach, & Göddeke, 2011) implemented LBM to
solve various complex fluid flow cases, achieving real-time performance.
This literature review demonstrates that there is no unique recipe or method
that can work for all types of industrial flow simulations. Mesh-based solvers
are reliable, robust and have a well-known degree of accuracy; however, they
are numerically too demanding to be used for large industrial processes. On
the other hand, the mesh-free and hybrid methods are very flexible and easy
to use. However, the knowledge gap on applicability, accuracy, stability and
convergence rate limits their extensive use in industrial R&D. Therefore, the
application of mesh-free and mesh-based methods for large industrial appli-
cations remains a dilemma.
In this thesis, the conventional mesh-based FVM solver is used to analyze
flow and heat transfer for selected industrial applications. The results pre-
sented in this thesis provide detailed insight into each simulated application.
The difficulties and challenges involved in simulating industrial processes are
highlighted based on the experiences gathered from the performed simula-
tions. Hypotheses are formulated, based on the results of the simulations, on
how to use the simulation results to improve the processes. The promising
flexibility of the SPH method and its diverse applications inspires its usage
for industrial heat transfer simulations. One of the goals of the thesis is to
introduce and use SPH for industrial heat transfer simulations; however, no
commercial or open-source SPH thermal solver is currently available. A small
number of thermal simulations (Cleary, 1998; Rook et al., 2007; Sigalotti et
al., 2003; Szewc et al., 2011) based on SPH have been performed; however,
these do not comprehensively cover the knowledge of applicability of SPH for
industrial heat transfer applications. Within the framework of this thesis, in Pa-
per IX, as a first step towards using SPH for industrial heat transfer simulation,
the energy conservation equations are implemented into an open-source SPH
flow solver called DualSPHysics (Crespo et al., 2015). The SPH thermal im-
plementation is used to solve a few classical CFD problems, and the solutions
are validated using analytical solutions. The solutions from the SPH thermal
solver are also compared with the solution from the FVM solver to benchmark
the solutions. The challenges faced and the limitations observed while using
the SPH thermal solver are discussed. Moreover, method comparison is also
one of the key focuses of this thesis for evaluating the efficiency of different
methods for industrial applications. The SPH thermal solver will be released
in future as an open-source package for the SPH user community to open up
the area of thermal simulations using SPH. The main idea behind this develop-
ment is to have a flexible thermal solver, the accuracy and speed of which can
13
be adjusted easily to fit the demand of a specific industrial process. In future,
the results from both the SPH and FVM thermal solvers could be combined to
synthesize the knowledge of a process from both overall and detailed solution
perspectives. The SPH thermal solver and the FVM thermal solver can both be
used where they fit best, in complementary fashion. For example, some parts
of the process can be simulated using the SPH thermal solver, and other parts
of the same process can be simulated using the FVM thermal solver. The re-
sults can then be combined for a full picture of the process. This development
is a small step towards the future goal of this work, which is to direct research
towards real-time simulations for industrial processes. The ultimate goal will
be to use CFD simulation in online control tools for decision support and to
operate the processes in an energy-efficient way.
14
3. Methodology
In this chapter, the approach to performing the CFD simulations for industrial
processes is illustrated. The theories and models are also presented in detail.
3.1 Modelling approach

A methodological approach is followed in this thesis to simulate and analyze
the industrial applications. The approach can be divided into the following
four main steps (Figure 3.1).
Step 1. A background review is performed to understand the research

area and to gather information on related works published by other
researchers before proceeding. The process is then analyzed in detail
and the scope and the expected outcome from the numerical study
are defined based on the formulated hypothesis. To reach the defined
goal, sufficient information is generated about the process to be able to
build the numerical domain and to select the most realistic boundary
conditions.
Step 2. The numerical domain is developed based on the information col-

lected in the previous step; the domain is then discretized using mesh or
particles depending on the chosen CFD approach. Suitable mathemati-
cal models are then employed to solve a well-defined problem.
Step 3. After obtaining the first solution, post-processing is performed. A

mesh grid-sensitivity analysis is also performed to ensure that the so-
lution is grid-independent in the case of mesh-based solvers. The final
solution is then validated using available theories, experiments or mea-
surements. If the results are not valid, then the model is revisited to
make possible adjustments and step 2 is repeated.
Step 4. The valid results are then analyzed and hypotheses are made based on
the simulation results. Detailed insight regarding the process is provided
and possible improvements are suggested based on the phenomena re-
vealed by the simulations.
15
Background review Model Development Solve & Post-process Analyse
CAD
Process analysis Validate results Hypotheses
Make hypotheses
Discretise
Boundary & Physics
Figure 3.1: Methodological approach for CFD simulations
3.2 Different approaches in CFD
Particle i Influence domain
Ω
Ω
(a) (b)
Figure 3.2: Different approaches of discretization for CFD simulations (a) Mesh (b)
particles
Two different approaches, based on Eulerian and Lagrangian reference

frames, respectively, are used in this thesis to perform high fidelity CFD
simulations for industrial applications. The CFD methods developed based
on the Eulerian reference frame are called mesh-based methods. In this
approach, the numerical domain Ω is discretized using mesh elements
(Figure 3.2a) and a set of highly nonlinear equations, the Navier–Stokes
equations (section 3.2.1), are solved over all the mesh elements. In this thesis,
the time-averaged versions of the original Navier–Stokes equations, RANS
equations are solved. This idea, where the Reynolds decomposition is applied
to separate the flow variables into mean (time-averaged) and fluctuating
16
components to derive the RANS equations, was proposed by Reynolds
Osborne (Reynolds, 1895). The RANS equations are principally used to
describe turbulent flows, this is the most common way to model turbulent
flows in most commercial CFD packages. There are other approaches, such
as DNS (direct numerical simulations) and LES (large eddie simulation),
to solve the Navier–Stokes equations. However, both of these approaches
are numerically much more demanding than the RANS approach, and are
therefore not a preferred option for large problems in industrial R&D. The
equations involved in the RANS modelling approach are presented in detail
in section 3.3. The most popular mesh-based FVM method is employed in
this thesis.
CFD methods developed based on the Lagrangian reference frame are
called mesh-free particle-based methods. In this approach, the fluid is
represented by a set of fluid particles (Figure 3.2b) that have properties like
mass, position, velocity and temperature. The original set of Navier–Stokes
equations is solved in this approach; however, the convection of the
particles occurs automatically due to the interaction forces between the
particles. Thus, the nonlinear convective terms in the original Navier–Stokes
momentum equations (section 3.2.1) are neglected. The most popular
Lagrangian mesh-free particle method, SPH, is employed in this thesis. The
Navier–Stokes equations are approximated using SPH kernel approximation
operators, thus the SPH form of the equations are solved. The equations
involved in the SPH modelling approach are presented in detail in section 3.4.
3.2.1 Governing equations

A system of transport equations employed to model any fluid flow mainly in-
volve the conservation of mass and momentum. Additional equations must
also be solved; for example, the energy conservation equation, to model the
heat transfer, turbulence equations, to model the turbulence, and species trans-
port equations, for combustion. The mass and momentum equations are pre-
sented below.
The mass conservation equation can be written as follows:
∂ρ ∂
+ (ρui ) = 0 (3.1)
∂t ∂ xi
The momentum conservation, in the original Navier–Stokes equation, is

described by the following equation:

∂ ∂ ∂p ∂ ∂ ui
(ρui ) + (ρu j ui ) = − + µ +Fi (3.2)
∂t ∂xj ∂ xi ∂ x j ∂xj
| {z } | {z }
convective term diffusive term
17
where, ρ is density, ui is velocity in tensor notation, p is pressure, µ is
dynamic viscosity and Fi is external force.
3.2.2 Energy transport equation

The energy conservation equation can be expressed as follows:
 

∂T ∂T  ∂ ∂T
ρc p 
 ∂t + u i
 = κ +φ (3.3)
∂ xi  ∂ xi ∂ xi
| {z }
convective term
where, T is thermal energy, c p is specific heat capacity, κ is thermal con-

ductivity and φ is the viscous dissipation or the rate of internal heat generation
per unit volume.
3.2.3 Mixture fraction transport equation

The mixture fraction concept is applied in Paper II to model the combustion,
under the assumption of equal mass diffusivities of the species involved in the
system. The individual species transport equation is then reduced to a single
Zi − Zi,ox
transport equation for the mixture fraction f = as follows:
Zi, f uel − Zi,ox

∂ ∂ ∂ µ ∂f
(ρ f ) + (ρui f ) = + Sm + Suser (3.4)
∂t ∂ xi ∂ xi σ ∂ xi
where, µ is viscosity and σ is a constant.
3.3 Mathematical Models for RANS

The computational transport equation systems, the RANS equations,
employed to model the ROT cooling (Paper I), the slab re-heating furnace
(Paper II), the rotating machines (Paper IV - Paper V) and sloshing in tank
(Paper VII) are presented in this section.
3.3.1 RANS transport equations

RANS is a time averaged version of the original Navier–Stokes equations pre-
sented in section 3.2.1. Reynolds decomposition (Reynolds, 1895) is applied
to decompose the flow variables into mean (time-averaged) and fluctuating
components to derive the RANS form of the governing equations. The decom-
position of flow variables gives rise to a special nonlinear term (−ρui 0 u j 0 ) in
the momentum conservation equation, called the Reynolds stress term, which
18
requires additional modelling to close the RANS equations. This Reynolds
stress term is mainly responsible for the modelling of turbulent quantities,
which gives rise to many turbulence models, for example, two equation mod-
els, like k − ε or k − ω turbulence models. The model equations for k − ε and
k − ω turbulence models are presented in section 3.3.2. The RANS version of
the momentum conservation equations can be written as follows:
∂ ∂ ∂ ∂p ∂
(ρui ) + (ρu j ui ) + ρui 0 u j 0 = − + τi j + Fi (3.5)
∂t ∂xj ∂xj ∂ xi ∂ x j
where, u and u0 represents the time-averaged and the fluctuating velocity,

respectively. The diffusion term is rewritten using the Newtonian fluid stress
tensor τi j , where τi j is modelled as follows:

∂ ui ∂ u j 2 ∂ uk
τi j = µ + − δi j (3.6)
∂ x j ∂ xi 3 ∂ xk
The Reynolds stress term (−ρui 0 u j 0 ) is defined as,

0 0
∂ ui ∂ u j 2 ∂ uk
−ρui u j = µt + − ρk + µt δi j (3.7)
∂ x j ∂ xi 3 ∂ xk
where, µ and µt are laminar and turbulent viscosity, respectively.
3.3.2 Turbulence transport equations

The Reynolds stress term (−ρui 0 u j 0 ) can be modelled in various ways. In this
thesis, two different turbulence models, the k − ε and the k − ω models are
employed.
3.3.2.1 k − ε turbulence model

Industrial flow problems are most often turbulent and thus require the turbu-
lence to be modelled by modelling the Reynolds stress term in the momentum
equation. There are several options of turbulence models available in the sci-
entific literature. The k − ε model (Launder & Spalding, 1974) is the most ro-
bust and economic turbulence model for industrial processes (Li et al., 2017).
The k − ε turbulence models are employed to model the turbulence in the sim-
ulations of the ROT cooling process (Paper I), the furnace (Paper II) and the
rotating machines (Paper IV - Paper VI). The equations describing the turbu-
lence kinetic energy (k) and the turbulence dissipation rate (ε) are as follows:

∂ ∂ ∂ µt ∂k
(ρk) + (ρku j ) = µ+ + Gk − ρε −YM (3.8)
∂t ∂xj ∂xj σk ∂xj
19
ε2

∂ ∂ ∂ µt
∂ε
(ρε) + (ρεu j ) = µ+ + ρC1 Sε − ρC2 √
∂t ∂xj ∂xj ∂xj
σε k + νε
(3.9)
kp
 
k 2 2S i j Si j
where turbulence viscosity µt = ρCµ , C1 = max 0.43, p
 ε ,

ε k
2Si j Si j + 5
ε
C2 = 1.9, σk = 1.0 and σε = 1.2 (ANSYS Inc., 2018).
3.3.2.2 k − ω turbulence model

The SST k − ω turbulence model developed by (Menter, 1994) is used for the
simulation of liquid sloshing in a rectangular tank (Paper VII). This turbu-
lence model provides both robustness and stability in this type of process. The
following equations represent the transport of the turbulent kinetic energy (k)
and the vorticity (ω), respectively.

∂ ∂ ∂ ∂k
(ρk) + (ρku j ) = Γk + Gk −Yk (3.10)

∂ ∂ ∂ ∂ω
(ρω) + (ρωu j ) = Γω + Gω −Yω + Dω (3.11)
µt
The effective diffusivity terms for k and ω are given by: Γk = µ + and
σk
µt ρk
Γω = µ + , respectively. The turbulent viscosity is given by: µt = α ∗ ,
σω ω
where α ∗ is a low Reynolds number region correction dampening factor. Gk ,
represents the generation of turbulence kinetic energy due to mean velocity
gradients. Yk , represent the dissipation rate of k. Gω , represents the generation
of ω. Yω , represent the dissipation rate of ω. Dω , is the cross-diffusion term
related to Γk and Γω .
3.3.3 Energy transport equation

The energy transport equation (3.3) is usually written in the form of total en-
ergy as follows (ANSYS Inc., 2018):

∂ ∂ ∂ ∂T
(ρE) + [ui (ρE + p)] = κe f f + ui (τi j )e f f + Sh (3.12)
∂t ∂ xi ∂xj ∂xj
20
µt
where E is the total energy, κe f f = κ + c p is the effective thermal con-
Prt
ductivity, Sh is heat of the chemical reaction and (τi j )e f f is the deviatoric stress
tensor, defined as

∂ ui ∂ u j 2 ∂ uk
(τi j )e f f = µe f f + − µe f f δi j (3.13)
∂ x j ∂ xi 3 ∂ xk
3.3.4 Volume of Fluid (RANS-VOF)

The volume of fluid (VOF) model is in principle an interface-tracking method
integrated into the RANS model as it is formulated in the CFD commercial
code ANSYS Fluent (ANSYS Inc., 2018). This is a very robust approach for
simulating multiphase flows. This approach is employed in this thesis to simu-
late the multiphase flow simulations, the ROT cooling (Paper I) and the liquid
sloshing in tank (Paper VII). In this formulation, each phase has its individual
continuity equation, however both phases share the same set of momentum
equations.
For RANS–VOF, the continuity transport equation, also called the volume
fraction equation, for the gas phase is given by (ANSYS Inc., 2018):

1 ∂ ∂
(αg ρg ) + αg ρg uig = 0 (3.14)
ρg ∂ t ∂ xi
where αg , ρg and uig are the volume fraction, the density and the velocity
of the gas phase in tensor notation, respectively. The interpolation near the
liquid–gas interface surface is calculated by using the geometric reconstruct
method developed by Youngs (Youngs, 1982). The method assumes that the
interface between two fluids has a linear slope within each cell, and uses this
linear shape to calculate the advection of fluid through the cell faces. This
method is the most accurate method currently available in ANSYS Fluent. In
the RANS–VOF approach, the momentum equation presented in section 3.3.1
is solved, and the same equation is solved for both phases.
3.4 Mathematical Models for SPH

SPH is simply an interpolation method where any function can be evaluated
by using the values of different properties of a set of particles. This section
presents the SPH form of the governing equations presented in section 3.2.1,
together with the necessary fundamentals to illustrate the SPH methodology.
21
3.4.1 SPH form of the governing equations
The basic principle of SPH is to approximate any function A(r) by the discrete
integral interpolants using smoothing kernel function W (r, h) as follows:
Ab
A(ra ) = ∑ mb W (ra − rb , h) (3.15)
b ρb
where, the summation is calculated over all the particles b within the
smoothing radius h. Equation (3.15) is then used to calculate gradient,
divergence and vorticity of different physical properties.
The SPH form of the mass conservation equation presented in section 3.2.1
can be expressed as follows:
∂ ρa ∂Wab
= − ∑ mb (ub − ua ) (3.16)
∂t b ∂ xi
The convective term in equation (3.2) is excluded in the SPH version of

the momentum conservation equation, since the convection happens automat-
ically due to the interaction forces between the particles. Thus the momentum
conservation equation in the SPH form can be written as follows:

∂ ua pb pa ∂ ∂ ∂ ui
= − ∑ mb 2
+ 2 W (ra − rb , h) + ν +g (3.17)
∂t b ρb ρa ∂ xi ∂xj ∂xj
| {z }
diffusion term
There are two different ways to model the viscous diffusion term avail-
able in the DualSPHysics software (Crespo et al., 2015), artificial viscosity
scheme, and laminar and sub-particle scale (SPS) turbulence model. The ar-
tificial viscosity scheme (J. J. Monaghan, 1992) is the most common in the
SPH community due to its simplicity and robustness. In this approach, the
viscosity is chosen as an artificial parameter, generally much higher than the
real viscosity of the fluid. In this scheme, the viscosity needs to be tuned for a
specific type of problem to capture the correct physical dynamic behavior of
the fluid. On the other hand, the laminar and SPS model decomposes the dif-
fusion term into laminar and turbulent components. The turbulence can then
be modelled by following the stress tensor modelling approach used by Go-
toh et al. (Gotoh et al., 2004) in their moving particle semi-implicit model.
For the detail of both the artificial and laminar and SPS turbulence viscosity
treatment, see the DualSPHysics user guide (Crespo et al., 2016).
22
3.4.2 Pressure formulation
In the DualSPHysics, the pressure is formulated using the equation of state.
This SPH formulation of pressure is based on density in a weakly compress-
ible approach where the fluid is considered slightly compressible, and a den-
sity variation within less than 1% is allowed (Crespo et al., 2016). This ap-
proach adjusts the compressibility to artificially lower the speed of sound in
order to maintain a reasonable time-step size. A variable time step is calcu-
lated based on the instantaneous courant number which is calculated based
on the speed of sound of all the particles in the domain. The courant number
(Cr) is a non-dimensional number that correlates the velocity (ui ), the small-
est particle distance (∆xi ) and the time-step size (∆t) according to the stability
∆t
condition, the Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) condition, as Cr = ui . The
∆xi
relationship between the pressure and the density in weakly compressible SPH
(WCSPH) can be expressed as follows (J. Monaghan, 1994):
γ
ρ
p=b −1 (3.18)
ρ0
isotropic constant, b = c0 2 ρ0 /γ, ρ0 is the reference density

where, γ is the p
and c0 = c(ρ0 ) = (∂ p/∂ ρ)|ρ0 is the speed of sound at the reference density.
3.4.3 Boundary conditions

Modelling wall boundaries is one of the great challenges in SPH because the
kernel support for the fluid particles near the wall is truncated. The imperme-
ability condition needs to be ensured to keep the mass balanced, while cor-
rectly representing any dynamic behavior of the fluid particles that is induced
by the viscous effect at the solid surfaces. Several techniques to model solid
boundaries are available in the SPH literature, for example, dynamic boundary
condition (DBC) (Crespo & Gomez-Gesteira, 2007), virtual particles (Ferrari
et al., 2009; Jin et al., 2015; Vacondio et al., 2012), Lennard–Jones repulsive
force (Rapaport, 2004) and boundary integral approach (Cercos-pita, 2012).
However, there is no general boundary treatment available that can be used
for all types of problems (Filho et al., 2016). A general and robust boundary
condition development remains one of the big challenges for SPH.
Dynamic boundary condition (DBC)

The dynamic boundary particle approach (Crespo & Gomez-Gesteira, 2007)
is used to model wall surfaces in DualSPHysics. In this approach, the solid
surfaces are represented by a separate set of fluid particles for which the same
set of fluid flow equations are solved, however these solid particles do not
move in response to the forces exerted on them. The DBC treatment available
in DualSPHysics represents the wall surfaces reasonably well for a wide range
23
of fluid flow problems. However, DBC has been reported to produce a small
gap at the wall, which restricts the fluid particles from remaining attached to
the wall surface. The gap can be reduced by increasing particle resolution,
however, it cannot be completely eliminated.
Open boundary condition

DualSPHysics currently supports open boundary condition for periodic
boundaries. In this boundary treatment, the particles near one open lateral
boundary are allowed to interact with the particles near the complementary
open lateral boundary on the other side of the domain (Crespo et al., 2015).
3.4.4 SPH thermal implementation

DualSPHysics (Crespo et al., 2015) is an open-source fluid flow solver based
on the WCSPH approach, in which the mass conservation equation (3.16) and
the momentum conservation equation (3.17) have already been implemented.
DualSPHysics is the most user friendly and popular SPH code in the SPH
community, and is robust for SPH-based fluid flow simulations. However, the
solver does not provide the functionality to solve thermal problems in its cur-
rent official version. To be able to solve thermal problems, we therefore im-
plement the energy conservation equations (3.3) in the DualSPHysics code,
which is presented in detail in Paper IX. The convective term is excluded
from the energy equation, since the convection occurs automatically due to
the interaction between the particles. The energy conservation equation (3.3)
can be presented in its SPH form as follows (J. J. Monaghan, 2005):
∂T mb 4κa κb
c p,a =∑ (Ta − Tb ) Fab (3.19)
∂t b ρa ρb κa + κb
where, c p , κ and T are specific heat capacity, thermal conductivity and

1 ∂Wab
temperature, respectively. Fab = , where rab is the distance between
rab ∂ xi
particles a and b.
3.5 Industrial applications addressed using RANS

RANS models are employed in this thesis to perform simulations for several
industrial applications using the mesh based finite volume CFD solver AN-
SYS Fluent. The industrial applications simulated in this thesis involve ROT
cooling in hot rolling steel industries (Paper I), the re-heating furnace (Paper
II), rotating machines (Paper IV - Paper VI), the liquid sloshing in LNG tanks
(Paper VII), Poiseuille flow heat transfer (Paper VIII) and the heat exchanger
24
(Paper IX). The numerical models for all the applications are presented and
the model development techniques are explained in this section.
Furnace Mechanical treatment Runout table(ROT)
Figure 3.3: Hot rolling process in steel industries (Picture: SSAB)
3.5.1 Hot rolling process

The hot rolling process (Figure 3.3) is a very long process in hot rolling steel
industries, in which large steel slabs are rolled into thin steel sheets. At the
beginning of the process, the steel slabs are heated up to 1250 ◦ C in several
phases in the furnace. The heated slabs are then mechanically treated to make
thin sheets. Finally, the steel sheets are cooled down to 200 ◦ C at the ROT
cooling section, where hundreds of water jets impinge on the steel sheet to
cool it rapidly. The cooling section is a very important phase of the process as
it is directly related to the crystallization of the steel atoms. The quality of the
steel sheet is completely dependent on how it is heated up in the furnace and
how it is cooled at the ROT cooling section.
Hot rolling steel industries are one of the largest energy consumers, and of-
ten rely on non-renewable energy resources such as LPG. The consumption of
fossil fuels during combustion has a high environmental impact in the form of
emissions such as CO2 and NOx . For instance, about 1000 m3 LPG per hour
is combusted to heat the steel slabs in the furnace studied in this thesis. More-
over, about 15 million litres of clean water are used per hour to cool the steel
sheets in the ROT cooling section, according to the steel plant. As a result, the
waste water from the plant contains traces of various materials which directly
contribute to water pollution and affect the environment adversely. It is often
very difficult to conduct measurements while running the process due to the
25
high temperatures involved. Advanced CFD simulations are therefore used to
provide significant and useful information about the process and to discover
unknown factors that influence the process. In this thesis, the first step of the
hot rolling process, the slab re-heating furnace (Paper II) and the last step of
the process, the impinging jet cooling at the ROT (Paper I) are simulated using
CFD to gain detailed insight into the process.
3.5.1.1 Impinging jet cooling

The ROT cooling problem is basically a liquid jet impingement cooling prob-
lem, where the liquid jets hit the hot flat surface perpendicularly to cool the
steel sheet as the steel sheet is moving at a certain speed. Impingement jets are
used in the hot rolling steel industries to cool the hot metal because of their
good heat transfer performance. The temperature is usually very high, and the
water therefore boils at the ROT cooling section. However, in this study, the
steel sheet is assumed to be stationary and the temperature is considered be-
low 100 ◦ C to avoid the boiling phenomena in order to simplify the problem.
After the jet impinges on the steel sheet, a very thin liquid film spreads over
the whole sheet. The thickness of the film can be as small as one millimeter,
which makes it very challenging to model using CFD simulations. The liquid
film must be completely resolved by maintaining at least a few layers of mesh
cells to be able to calculate the thermal gradients in the liquid film correctly. In
Paper I, the heat transfer from the hot steel sheet to the liquid jets is simulated
by developing three different models. Two 3D models are developed to ana-
lyze the heat transfer due to a single jet and double jets. The double-jet model
is mainly developed to investigate the jet–jet interaction and its influence on
the global heat transfer. In addition, a 2D axisymmetric model is developed
to accurately calculate the liquid film thickness, to capture the dynamics of
the jet interface and to perform a parametric analysis to evaluate the thermal
performance at different flow rates.
Inlet
Pipe radius (0.015 m)
Pressure outlet Cylinder radius (0.05 m) Pipe height (0.05 m)
Pressure outlet
Cylinder height (0.15 m)
Y XY- symmetry
1.2 m
Steel sheet Z X
0.6 m
Pressure outlet
(a) (b) 0.05 m
Figure 3.4: Single impinging jet 3D model (a) Full domain (b) Simulated domain with
dimensions and boundary conditions
At the ROT cooling section, there is usually a large number of water jets
impinging on the steel sheet (Figure 3.3) to achieve a uniform cooling over
26
Inlet
Pipe radius (0.015 m)
Cylinder radius (0.05 m) Pipe height (0.05 m)
Pressure outlet
YZ- symmetry Cylinder height (0.15 m)
Pressure outlet Y XY- symmetry
Z X
0.6 m 0.6 m
Steel sheet Pressure outlet
0.05 m
(a) (b)
Figure 3.5: Multiple impinging jet 3D model (a) Full domain (b) Simulated domain
with dimensions and boundary conditions
(a) (b)
Figure 3.6: Mesh for impinging jet cooling model (a) 2D-axisymmetric model (b) 3D
model
the entire sheet. Using the mesh-based CFD approach, simulating such a large
process is unapproachable due to need for a very large mesh to cover the
entire ROT. Therefore, the problem needs to be simplified by reducing it to a
smaller problem to be solved using CFD. It can be assumed that every water
jet has an identical cooling effect; however, there are significant interactions
between the jets since they are very close to each other. Therefore, it is crucial
to analyze the cooling performance of a single water jet as well as the influence
on the cooling performance due to the interaction from the surrounding jets.
To do this, a single-jet 3D model (Figure 3.4) is developed to analyze the
cooling performance of a single-jet, and a double-jet 3D model (Figure 3.5)
is developed to analyze the influence of the jet–jet interaction on the thermal
performance.
The numerical domain is created in such a way that the domain size is
small enough to reduce the number of mesh cells, but large enough to avoid
possible influences of boundary conditions on the solution. For the 3D models
(Figure 3.4 and Figure 3.5), a rectangular domain on the steel surface and a
27
circular beam connecting the water pipe and the steel surface are chosen. The
dimensions of the rectangular domain and the circular beam are chosen in
such a way that the pressure outlet boundary conditions do not affect the air–
water interface. For the single-jet model, a symmetry boundary condition is
used on one side and half of this domain is simulated (Figure 3.4). However,
for the double-jet model, symmetry is applied on two sides, thus one fourth of
the original domain is simulated (Figure 3.5).
The meshes for the 2D and the 3D single jet are presented in Figure 3.6.
Rectangular cells and hexahedral cells are used to generate the mesh for the
2D and the 3D models, respectively. Impinging water jet is a free-surface flow
problem and the location of the air–water interface is not known. It is crucial
to capture the air–water interface accurately to obtain correct overall flow dy-
namics of the jet, and to be able to accurately predict the cooling performance.
Therefore, the mesh is refined in the vicinity of the expected interface. To re-
solve the boundary layer, the cells close to the steel sheet are also refined to
maintain a non-dimensional wall distance (y+ ) value around 30. A y+ value in
this range guarantees the turbulence wall law functionality (Salim & Cheah,
2009). The mesh quality for the models is presented in Table 3.1.
TC 3&4 TC 5&6
TC 1&2 Burner Burner
Burner
Zone 1 Zone 3
Zone 5+6
Slab Zone 2 Zone 4 Zone 7+8

Burner
Burner
16 m
Figure 3.7: Slab re-heating furnace (side view) in 2D showing different zones, burners
and thermocouples (TC) in Zone1
3.5.1.2 Re-heating furnace

The slab re-heating furnace in the hot rolling steel industry is very large, and
is divided into several zones. The 11 m × 1.6 m × 0.22 m (weight ∼30 ton)
slabs are heated to about 1250 ◦ C following a heating curve called the ideal
curve, which is a unique recipe to achieve a specific quality of steel sheet. The
main challenge in simulating this large furnace is the large number of burn-
ers together with the combustion; it is beyond the capability of mesh-based
CFD solvers to simulate the whole process with the available computational
resources. Therefore, a reduced model was developed to understand the flow
pattern inside the furnace and to observe the impact of having multiple burn-
ers operating next to each other by using the periodicity assumption, in Paper
II. The furnace at the studied hot rolling steel plant consists of 8 zones in total,
where Zone 1 and Zone 2 are the preheating zones (Figure 3.7). In this study,
the main focus is to analyze the heat transfer in the preheating zone, Zone
28
Outlet
BC: Periodic
BC: Wall
(a)
(b) Zone 1
BC: Symmetry 19m
Steel slab
Air inlet
LPG(C3H8)
(c)
(d)
Figure 3.8: Furnace model with boundary conditions (BC) (a) Burner configuration
in 3D (b) Numerical domain with single burner (c) Zone 1 and 2 in 3D
(d) Burner configuration in 2D
(a)
X
Z
(b)
Figure 3.9: Mesh for the furnace model (3.4 million cells) (a) burner (b) the whole
domain
1. Zone 1 has 8 burners in a row, each with approximately 3500 kW capac-

ity (Figure 3.8c). The burners in Zone 1 are configured in a periodic manner.
Therefore, to reduce the numerical domain, a slice of Zone 1 is simulated to-
gether with the real burner configuration in full size. Periodic boundary con-
ditions are used on both sides of the cross-section surfaces of the numerical
29
domain to represent the whole of Zone 1 (Figure 3.8b). Zone 2 has a similar
power capacity to Zone 1. Therefore, we consider Zone 2 to be identical to
Zone 1 and we use symmetry boundary condition to represent Zone 2 (Figure
3.8b). In this way, the numerical domain is greatly reduced in comparison to
the original size of Zone 1 and Zone 2, but still represents them numerically.
The movements of the steel slabs are introduced by considering a constant
speed of 3.84 mm/sec.
The mesh for the pre-heating zone of the furnace is presented in Figure 3.9.
The mesh cells are refined to capture all the small-scale effects of the burners,
combustion and the heat transfer to the steel slabs. The non-dimensional wall
distance at the steel slab surface, y+ , is maintained at 30 which is sufficient to
ensure the turbulence wall law functionality (Salim & Cheah, 2009).
Surfaces of
housing A
Stator internal surface B
0.22m
C
0.005m 0.2m
Wafters
Y
Y
X
0.15m Z 0.05m
Z
0.3m
Rotor (Grey) 0.4m
0 C 0.4
Rotor Wafters Air
Rotor shaft B
A
(a) (b)
Figure 3.10: Rotating machine model (a) Domain together with boundary conditions
(b) 2D cross-section illustrating the dimensions (AA, BB and CC are the
XY cross-section plane used for post-processing)
3.5.2 Rotating machines

Rotating machines like motors, generators and turbomachinery are another
example of an energy-intensive sector, with an engineering apparatus that is
widely used in residential, commercial and industrial sectors. A large amount
of energy is consumed by rotating machines, and the use of such devices is
continuously increasing. This sector is identified as one of the key sectors with
large energy savings potential by the European commission (“EU Commis-
sion Regulation (EC) No 640/2009”, 2009). There are two major aspects of
energy savings from rotating machines, energy efficient machinery and energy
efficient control systems (Abdelaziz et al., 2011). Around 5–25% of the en-
ergy consumed by electric motors is lost during the energy conversion process
(Andreas, 1992). An increase in efficiency of 2% in existing standard motors
will reduce losses by 25% (Saidur, 2010). On the other hand, replacing exist-
30
ing standard motors with motors with energy-efficient control systems, such
as a variable speed controller based on the load, output and demand, could
reduce the energy consumption by 15–30% (Mecrow & Jack, 2008). About
15% of the consumed electrical energy is converted into heat due to various
losses in the machine (Pyrhönen et al., 2008). The temperature increase inside
the machine is caused by the waste energy and friction during machine oper-
ation. The maximum temperature inside the machine is a limiting factor for
the efficiency and performance of the machine. Overheating has a long-term
impact on the lifetime of a machine. Detailed knowledge of the heat transfer
inside the machine is required in order to design an efficient thermal manage-
ment system. The majority of the heat transfer from the rotor occurs in the
thin air-gap (∼1 mm) between the rotor and the stator. This air-gap width has
a significant impact on the friction losses and the heat transferred between the
rotor and the stator. Another key parameter that influences the heat transfer
in the air-gap is the rotation speed of the rotor, which is the most important
parameter in motors with a variable speed controller.
Figure 3.11: Mesh for the rotating machine model
The complex windings, fins of the rotor and the very thin air-gap (less than
1 mm) between the rotor and the stator make it very challenging to simulate
the motor using CFD. The air-gap needs to be completely resolved in the nu-
merical models, since the heat transfer primarily takes place in this narrow
region. To address this important application, several models addressing dif-
ferent aspects are developed in this thesis (Paper IV – Paper VI). In paper
IV, a numerical model to simulate the fluid flow and heat transfer inside the
machine is developed, employing the mesh-based FVM method. The devel-
oped model is a simplified motor in which the motor windings are modelled
virtually. The air-gap thickness, for the present analysis, is considered larger
than is usually found in motors to avoid a large number of mesh cells. Con-
stant wall temperature of 150 ◦ C is applied to the rotor surface in the air-gap,
31
where the rotor is rotating at a constant speed of 1500 rpm. The details and
dimensions of the model are illustrated in Figure 3.10. The same model (Fig-
ure 3.10a) is also used in Paper VI, where the SPH method is used for the
first time to simulate the air flow inside this type of machine. The SPH model
in Paper VI does not include heat transfer analysis due to the unavailability
of a commercial or open-source SPH thermal solver. In Paper V, a parametric
study is performed to analyze the flow and heat transfer inside the machine
by varying the air-gap width and the rotation speed of the rotor. Nine different
simulations, considering 3 different air-gap widths (1 mm, 3 mm, 5 mm) and
3 different rotation speeds (1500 rpm, 5000 rpm, 10000 rpm), are performed
to obtain a full spectrum of the thermal performance of the machine in dif-
ferent scenarios. A FVM model is employed for the parametric study. Figure
3.11 presents the mesh for the FVM models used in Paper IV and Paper V.
The mesh does not include the solid rotor, because the rotor is modelled by
its surfaces. The mesh elements in the air-gap and surrounding the wafters are
refined to capture the aerodynamics and the heat transfer accurately. The mesh
quality for the rotating machine models is presented in Table 3.1.
x2
S2
H
z
-ϴ +ϴ
S1
x1 H1
Center x
w
Figure 3.12: LNG Tank model with dimensions
3.5.3 LNG vessels in carrier ships

Transport of LNG in cargo vessels is increasingly used to transport fuel across
the globe. The stability of these large carrier ships is severely affected by the
LNG sloshing inside the tanks. The dynamic liquid movement inside the tank,
the result of the different types of movements of the ship (rolling, yawing and
pitching), is termed sloshing. Sloshing phenomena in LNG containers can
damage the internal coating of the tank. Very strong impacts can sometimes
occur on the tank walls, potentially causing hazardous damage. The slosh-
ing must be avoided as much as possible to achieve better control of the ship
and to avoid any accidents. Several studies have highlighted the challenges
32
encountered as a result of the sloshing, and have proposed anti-sloshing tank
structures (Ha, 2007). The forces on the walls due to the sloshing are pre-
dicted by a control system to control the ship. Measuring the forces acting on
the internal walls of the tank by placing sensors is prohibited because such
equipment can ignite the fuel, and is therefore highly dangerous.
Two different approaches, RANS–VOF and SPH, are employed in Paper
VII to simulate the sloshing inside a rectangular tank under periodical rolling
motion, in 2D. RANS–VOF is a robust mesh-based solver for simulating mul-
tiphase flows. SPH is also known to be very efficient for such types of flows
(J. Monaghan, 2012). Tracking the free surface of the liquid efficiently is key
to predicting the sloshing impact and the various forces acting on the walls in-
side the tank. A small-scale tank with two different filling levels is simulated,
and the results from both RANS–VOF and SPH models are validated using
available experimental data. Water is considered as the working fluid due to
the availability of experimental data. The scaling laws are evaluated for this
problem and a large-scale tank is also simulated using SPH to validate the
concept in Paper VII.
The numerical model is presented in Figure 3.12. The tank is subject to a
sinusoidal roll motion with rolling angle ± θ , centered at z-axis with a fre-
quency f r = 1/T 1, where T1 is the time for a full roll motion. In Figure 3.12, x
and z are axes, w is width of the tank, H is the height of the tank, x1 is distance
of sensor S1 from the bottom of the tank, x2 is distance of sensor S2 from the
left wall of the tank, θ is rolling angle and H1 is initial height of water level.
The simulated cases are illustrated in Table 3.2.
Table 3.1: Mesh information for the FVM models presented in section 3.5. For details
of the mesh quality measure, see (ANSYS Inc., 2018)
Model Number Cell type Max. aspect Min. orthogonal Max. Y+ value
of cells ratio quality skewness at wall
2D-axisymmetric(ROT) 27,000 Quad 37 1 None 2 ∼ 15
3D 1-jet (ROT) 1.4 million Hex 44 0.74 0.55 4 ∼ 30
3D 2-jet (ROT) 1.6 million Hex 51 0.70 0.57 4 ∼ 33
Furnace 3.4 million Mixed 34 0.23 0.85 30 ∼ 300
Rotating machines 1.4 million Hex 35 0.99 0.05 1 ∼ 18
Tank sloshing 18,000 Hex 1.4 1 1 47 ∼ 128
3.6 Industrial applications addressed using SPH

SPH models are employed in this thesis to perform simulations for rotating
machines (Paper VI), liquid sloshing in LNG tanks (Paper VII), Poiseuille
flow heat transfer (Paper VIII) and the heat exchanger (Paper IX). This section
presents the numerical models and the techniques used to develop the models
for these applications.
33
3.6.1 Rotating machine
The SPH method is used to simulate the air flow inside the rotating machine
presented in 3D in Figure 3.10 in Paper VI. A cross section of the rotating
machine is also simulated in 2D (Figure 3.13b). The air is represented consid-
ering uniform particle resolution, with about 2.8 million particles and 70000
particles used to represent the 3D and 2D models, respectively. The heat trans-
fer is not simulated for this case because of unavailability of a commercial or
open-source SPH thermal solver. The air-flow simulation results from the 3D
and 2D SPH models are compared with the results from FVM models in Paper
VI.
Stator (Transparent) Stator
Rotor
Fluid particles
Rotor(Grey) (Blue)
(a) (b)
Figure 3.13: SPH models for the rotating machine presented in Figure 3.10 (a) 3D
model (2.8 million particles) (b) 2D cross section model (70000 parti-
cles)
3.6.2 LNG vessel in carrier ship

Several SPH models are developed to simulate the sloshing in a rectangular
tank in Paper VII, using the model presented in Figure 3.12. Four different
cases are developed, consisting of two different filling levels (18% and 70%).
The simulated cases with all the details are presented in Table 3.2. Case 1 and
Case 2 present the model-scale tank, whereas Case3 and Case 4 present the
full-scale tank. SPH is employed to simulate all the cases, but RANS–VOF
is employed to simulate Case1 only. The large-scale tank is simulated using
SPH to validate the downscaling approach for the tank sloshing problem.
3.6.3 Transient heat conduction

Transient heat conduction in solid and liquid are simulated to validate the SPH
thermal implementation presented in Paper IX. The energy conservation equa-
tion is implemented in the open source SPH fluid flow solver DualSPHysics.
34
Table 3.2: Tank sloshing case specifications
Cases Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4

w (m) 0.9 0.9 20 20
H (m) 0.508 0.508 11.29 11.29
H1 (m) 0.093 0.3553 2.07 7.89
θ (degree) ±4 ±4 ±4 ±4
T1 (sec) 1.67 1.22 7.87 5.75
x1 (m) 0.093 2.07
x2 (m) 0.025 0.56
d p (m) 0.002 0.002 0.0444 0.0444
Approach SPH yes yes yes yes
VOF yes no no No
A square aluminium block, with 0.1 m sides, is initialized to 20 ◦ C. A con-

stant temperature of 90 ◦ C is applied from one side of the block and the other
sides are kept at 20 ◦ C. Similarly, for conduction in liquid, a square alunimium
cavity of size 0.1 m × 0.1 m is filled with water. A constant temperature of
90 ◦ C is applied from one side, while keeping the other sides at 20 ◦ C. Both
cases are simulated using FVM and SPH. The model, boundary conditions,
the mesh for the FVM model and the particles for SPH model are presented
in Figure 3.14. The material properties used for the simulations are presented
in Table 3.3.
(a) (b) (c)

Figure 3.14: Heat conduction model with discretization (a) domain together with
thermal boundary conditions (b) FVM mesh (∼ 40000 cells) (c) SPH
particles (∼ 40000 particles)
35
Table 3.3: Thermal properties of Aluminium and Water
Properties Aluminium Water

Density (Kg/m3 ) 2719 1000
Thermal conductivity (W/m.K) 202.4 0.6
Heat capacity (J/kg.K) 871 4182
Kinematic viscosity (m2 /s) 0.000001
3.6.4 Transient heat convection

Transient heat convection for two different cases, (i) flow and heat transfer in
an infinitely long mini-channel and (ii) flow and heat transfer in a tube bank
heat exchanger, are simulated using the SPH thermal implementation. Both
cases are simulated in 2D under laminar conditions using FVM and SPH.
For the SPH approach, the laminar viscosity modelling approach (Crespo et
al., 2015) is used. The material properties used for water and aluminium are
presented in Table 3.3.
3.6.4.1 Infinite mini channel
Entry flow profile Fully developed flow profile

20°C
δT δ
Periodic 2mm Periodic
In out
40°C
Water Solid wall Velocity profile
Hydrodynamic boundary layer (δ) Thermal boundary layer (δT)
Figure 3.15: Mini-channel with boundary conditions
Mini- and micro-channel flow heat transfer occurs in many important en-
gineering and industrial applications, such as heat exchangers, chemical re-
actors, motors and generators, and district heating. Poiseuille flow and heat
transfer can be applied to the laminar flow and heat transfer in an infinitely
long channel. The flow field in Poiseuille flow is divided into two regions, the
hydrodynamic entrance region and the fully developed region. In the entrance
region, the laminar hydrodynamic boundary layer grows rapidly due to the
viscous force at the walls. The boundary layers from top and bottom walls
grow until they merge and the flow field reaches a state where the velocity
profile no longer changes. The same also applies to the thermal development,
however, the thermal boundary layer is thinner than the hydrodynamic bound-
36
ary layer for water, and it therefore takes longer to reach a thermally steady
state.
To model the Poiseuille flow, a 2D horizontal channel of width 2 mm is
chosen, and a periodic boundary condition is applied in the direction of the
flow. The configuration of the simulated micro-channel is illustrated in Figure
3.15. The top wall is set to a constant temperature of 20 ◦ C and the bottom wall
is set to a constant temperature of 40 ◦ C. The water temperature is initialized
to 20 ◦ C and adherence boundary condition is applied to the solid walls of
the channel. This case is simulated under laminar conditions. Gravitational
acceleration is neglected since the channel is very thin. Figure 3.16 shows the
numerical discretization of the domain (Figure 3.15) for FVM and SPH.
(a) (b)
Figure 3.16: Numerical discretization for the mini-channel (a) FVM mesh (∼ 50000
cells) (b) SPH particles (∼ 50000 particles)
3.6.4.2 Tube bank heat exchanger

The tube bank in cross flow has been subject to many studies, mainly due to its
presence in a wide range of heat exchangers (Khan et al., 2006; Safwat Wilson
& Khalil Bassiouny, 2000; Wang et al., 2016). A tube bank heat exchanger is
a bank of tubes, containing flowing liquid at one temperature, immersed in a
cross flow of liquid at a different temperature. Heat is exchanged between the
tube bank and the cross-flow liquid. The tube bank heat exchanger is simulated
in Paper IX as a 2D cross section of a tube bank, immersed in a cross-flow
liquid, presented in Figure 3.17a. It consists of equally spaced (0.01 m) tubes
arranged in a staggered manner. The tubes are 0.01 m in diameter, and contain
liquid at 100 ◦ C. The cross-flow water is initialized at 10 ◦ C and a periodic
boundary condition is applied to model the cross flow over the tube bank. The
tubes are numerically modelled by applying a constant temperature boundary
condition. The detailed configuration of the simulated heat exchanger in 2D is
shown in Figure 3.17b. This case is also simulated under laminar conditions,
where an acceleration of 0.001 ms-2 is applied in the direction of the cross
flow. Gravitational acceleration is neglected for this case. Figure 3.18 shows
the numerical discretization of the domain (Figure 3.17b) for FVM and SPH.
37
X=0.01 X=0.02 X=0.03
0.01m
0.08m
0.01m
Y=0.05
Cross flow Periodic Periodic
Y=0.04
In Out
Y=0.03
Y
Z
X
0.04m
X Y Solid wall (10°C)
Cold water channel (10°C)
Water Hot tubes Hot water tubes (100°C)
(a) (b)
Figure 3.17: Tube bank heat exchanger (a) 3D schematic (b) 2D cross section with di-
mensions (dashed lines inside the domain are used for post-processing)
Mesh Particles
(a) (b)
Figure 3.18: Numerical discretization for the tube bank heat exchanger model (a)
FVM mesh (∼300000 cells) (b) SPH particles (∼300000 particles)
38
4. Results and discussion
This chapter presents the results of numerical simulations for the engineering
and industrial applications presented in section 3.5 and section 3.6, obtained
from both mesh-based FVM and mesh-free particle-based SPH solver. The
results presented in this chapter illustrate the accuracy and reliability of the
solutions from each solver. This chapter highlights the difficulties and chal-
lenges of simulating industrial applications by employing mesh-based and
mesh-free solvers, and outlines the future of such approaches. This chapter
also provides a detailed discussion of the studied topic while answering the
research questions.
4.1 Reynold Averaged Navier-Stokes

4.1.1 Hot rolling process
The hot rolling process is addressed in this thesis by employing mesh-based
FVM solvers based on the RANS approach. The hot rolling process involves
very complex physical phenomena, both in the ROT cooling process and the
re-heating furnace. Emerging methods, such as SPH, are not mature enough to
handle such complex industrial problems. Thus, RANS methods are currently
the appropriate choice.
d
Pipe
Uf
Axis of rotation
Free surface
z0
δ – Momentum boundary layer

δT – Thermal boundary layer
h(r) Hydraulic jump
Stagnation point I r1 II r2 III r3
Steel surface
Radial flow Stagnation zone Radial flow
zone zone
Figure 4.1: Schematic of impinging jet cooling, I: the stagnation zone, II: the lami-
nar boundary layer, III: the momentum boundary layer reaches the film
surface
39
4.1.1.1 Impinging jet cooling
The jet impingement cooling at the ROT cooling process is a free-surface
multiphase flow with highly deforming interfaces and a high pressure gradi-
ent. After impinging the steel surface, the liquid jet becomes stagnant in the
stagnation zone and then spreads over the whole steel sheet as a thin liquid
film due to the high pressure gradient (Figure 4.1). Capturing the dynamic
air–water interface and resolving the thermal and pressure gradients taking
place in the thin liquid film are a big challenge for any numerical method.
Therefore, to understand the flow and thermodynamics of the impinging jet,
an accurate modelling technique must be employed. The RANS–VOF mul-
tiphase model equations, presented in section 3.3.4, are solved in Paper I, to
simulate the numerical models presented in section 3.5.1.1 under steady-state
conditions. The liquid is considered incompressible, and the turbulence is ac-
counted for by employing the k − ε turbulence models presented in section
3.3.2.1. Moreover, the heat transfer is modelled by solving the energy conser-
vation equation presented in section 3.3.3.
Figure 4.2: Interface of water jet for different inlet velocities
The numerical results presented in Paper I are analyzed and validated ana-
lytically and using experimental data, mainly focusing on the location of the
air–water interface (Figure 4.2), the liquid film thickness and the heat transfer
coefficient (Figure 4.3). At the ROT, an array of jets is used to cool the steel
sheet. Each jet is responsible for cooling a small zone locally, called the stag-
nation zone, since the maximum cooling occurs within the stagnation zone of
an impinging jet (Figure 4.3). The combined cooling effect from all the water
jets result in a uniform cooling over the steel sheet. The size of the stagnation
40
Figure 4.3: Non-dimensional heat transfer coefficient (Nusselt number, Nu) for differ-
ent inlet velocities
Figure 4.4: Comparison between simulation and correlation (4.1) of the minimum jet
diameter (Dmin )
zone is influenced by the inlet flow rate. The parametric study presented in
Paper I shows a linear relationship between the inlet water flow rate and the
maximum heat transfer coefficient.
41
Figure 4.5: Temperature field showing the cooling effect when using single and mul-
tiple jets
Figure 4.6: Water splashing due to the interaction between jets
The inlet velocity (U f ) and the gravitational effect (g) on the interface of the
water jet can be described using the continuity equation and the Bernoulli’s
equation as follows (for detail, see, Appendix):
q
D(Z) = d/ 4 1 + 2g(z0 − Z)/U f 2 (4.1)
The analytical correlation (4.1) presented in Paper I can be used to estimate

the minimum water jet diameter, Dmin (Figure 4.2). The minimum jet diameter
can then be used to estimate the diameter of the zone with maximum cooling
effect by using the correlation (4.2) given in Paper I based on the simulation
results.
rNu max = 0.825Dmin (4.2)
42
Thus, the uniformity of the cooling effect over the steel sheet can be es-
timated by using the correlation (4.2). The cooling effect when using single
and multiple jets is illustrated in Figure 4.5. The double-jet 3D case simu-
lated in transient shows a lot of splashing due to the interaction between the
radial flows from the jets. This splashing phenomenon makes it extremely
challenging to simulate due to the instability and divergence issues during the
simulations (Li et al., 2017). To obtain a stable solution, the distance between
jets is considered much larger than the original configuration of a typical ROT.
Therefore, the simulated double jets behave like isolated jets in terms of fluid
flow and thermal characteristics. The results presented in Paper I show the de-
gree of accuracy of the models. They indicate that the mesh-based solver was
unable to handle the complex interaction between the two jets that are close
to each other. Therefore, simulating the entire ROT, consisting of hundreds
water jets, employing such a numerical method appears unfeasible.
4.1.1.2 Re-heating furnace

The re-heating furnace model presented in Figure 3.8 is simulated under
steady-state condition by solving the RANS equations presented in section
3.3.1 in Paper II. The turbulence is accounted for by employing the k − ε
turbulence model presented in section 3.3.2.1. To model the heat transfer and
the combustion, the energy conservation equation and the mixture fraction
transport equations presented in section 3.3.3 and section 3.2.3, respectively,
are solved. The combustion is modelled by considering infinitely fast
chemistry, where the gas density is modelled using the probability density
function concept incorporated in the non-premixed combustion method
(ANSYS Inc., 2018). A single burner in a real furnace configuration is
simulated, in which air (21% O2 and 79% N2 ) flow at 75200 m3 /hour at 560
◦ C and LPG (C H ) flow at 1000 m3 /hour at 20 ◦ C are introduced. To imitate
3 8
the real scenario, a constant speed is applied to move the slabs inside the
furnace, and temperature-dependent thermal properties were considered for
the slabs.
Figure 4.7: Path lines of velocity illustrating recirculation inside the furnace
Several difficulties and challenges were faced during the modelling of the
furnace. Firstly, it is very large and extremely complex in terms of geometry;
43
Figure 4.8: Iso-surfaces (a) mass fraction of O2 (b) temperature on the iso-surfaces
of mass fraction of O2
Figure 4.9: Volume average temperature of the steel slab
thus, to identify an optimal numerical domain, which is numerically solv-

able but also sufficient to represent the pre-heating zone of the furnace, was
challenging, and the final model presented in Paper II was reached by trial
and error. Generating a good mesh (Figure 3.9) was another challenging task
which took a major effort. Secondly, the multiple physical phenomena and
44
time scales, for example, slab movements and fast combustion chemistry to-
gether with conduction, convection and radiation heat transfer, make it chal-
lenging to simulate and reproduce the events in the furnace.
The numerical results presented in Paper II reveal high degrees of recircu-
lation (Figure 4.7) inside the furnace, which result in incomplete combustion
in the system. The uncombusted oxygen reaches the steel slab surface due to
the recirculation (Figure 4.8), and forms an iron oxide layer, which is one of
the common problems faced in the studied steel plant. The calculated average
temperature of the steel slab is compared to the estimated slab temperature in
the online control system in the steel plant, which clearly shows a deviation
from the goal to reach the ideal curve (Figure 4.9).

The rotating machine model geometry presented in Figure 3.10 is simulated
by solving the RANS equations presented in section 3.3.1. The model is devel-
oped considering multiple reference frames, a rotating and a stationary frame,
and the sliding-mesh technique (ANSYS Inc., 2018) is used to model the ro-
tating system efficiently. The turbulence and heat transfer are modelled by
employing the k − ε turbulence model and solving the energy conservation
equations, which are presented in section 3.3.2.1 and section 3.3.3, respec-
tively. Several studies are performed for rotating machines, employing both
FVM and SPH methods. This section presents the results from FVM models,
and the results from the SPH model are presented in section 4.2.1.
(a) (b)
Figure 4.10: Velocity vectors on cross-section planes inside the motor (a) Taylor vor-
tices ap-pears in pairs (b) Boundary layer flow pattern in the air-gap
surrounding the rotor)
Paper IV presents a vigorous analysis of the rotating machines covering the

details of the interesting flow field and their effect on local and global thermal
performance. A high emphasis was given to resolving the flow and heat trans-
fer phenomena in the thin air-gap between the rotor and the stator. The simula-
45
Figure 4.11: Simulated average velocity profile in the air-gap of the motor together
with analytical solution and experimental data (Reichardt, 1956)
(a) (b)
Figure 4.12: Taylor vortex flow and temperature distribution inside the air-gap of the
motor (a) velocity contour (b) temperature contour
Figure 4.13: Temperature contour on internal surface of the stator for rotor speed of
10000rpm (a) 5mm air-gap (b) 3mm air-gap (c) 1mm air-gap
46
(a)
(b)
(c)
Figure 4.14: Heat transfer coefficient on a line along the length of the rotor surface
for 9 different cases
tions presented in this paper are performed under transient conditions to inves-
tigate the transient effects due to the turbulence created by the rotor wafters.
The velocity profile in the air-gap Figure 4.11 and the non-dimensional heat
transfer coefficient from the simulation are validated by using analytical so-
lutions and experimental data (Reichardt, 1956). The complex Taylor vortices
appears in pairs, presented in Figure 4.10, and are captured well by the sim-
ulations, clearly illustrating the level of accuracy of the solver. The Taylor
vortices appear in the velocity field in the air-gap (Figure 4.12a), resulting in
similar vortices to the temperature field (Figure 4.12b), which consequently
introduce an oscillating pattern to the heat transfer coefficient (Figure 4.14).
A parametric study carried out by varying the air-gap width and the rota-
tion speed of the rotor is performed in Paper V. The results show that for a thin
air-gap like those encountered in a real electric motor, the Taylor vortices dis-
appear (Figure 4.13). The presence of Taylor vortices significantly increases
the heat transfer capability (Figure 4.14). The observations presented in Paper
V indicate that both the air-gap width and the rotation speed have significant
influence on the heat transfer. The heat transfer increases with increasing air-
gap width and increasing rotation speed of the rotor (Figure 4.14). Thus, the
design of a rotating machine can be influenced by varying the air-gap width
to take advantage of the Taylor vortices, and the machine can be operated at
higher speed to enhance the thermal performance. However, further justifica-
tion of these observations is required from an electromagnetic perspective.
47
Figure 4.15: Air velocity profile on the YZ cross-section plane (Figure 3.10b) at time
t=2 sec (a) FVM 3D model (b) SPH 3D model
Figure 4.16: Air velocity contour on XY cross-section planes close to the motor
wafters at time t=2 sec (FVM 3D model (top) and the SPH 3D model
(bottom)), where the rotor is rotating counter clockwise (a) Velocity pro-
file on plane AA (Figure 3.10b) (b) Velocity profile on plane BB (Figure
3.10b) (c) Velocity profile on plane CC (Figure 3.10b)
4.2 Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

The SPH method is employed to model the air-flow inside the rotating ma-
chine in Paper VI. To model the rotating machine presented in Figure 3.13, the
SPH forms of the continuity and the momentum equations presented in sec-
tion 3.4.1 are solved under the transient condition. The turbulence is modelled
by employing laminar and SPS turbulence modelling approaches (Crespo et
al., 2015). The results obtained from the SPH models are compared to the
simulation results presented in Paper IV. The velocity field inside the machine
illustrated in Figure 4.15 and Figure 4.16 show an overall agreement; how-
ever, the velocity field inside the air-gap was unresolved in the SPH model
48
Figure 4.17: Velocity profile inside the air-gap between the rotor and the stator for
the SPH 2D, SPH 3D and FVM 3D models
due to the low particle resolution in the air-gap. The velocity profiles from 2D
and 3D SPH models presented in Figure 4.17 show that the results from the
3D model could be improved by considering higher particle resolutions. The
fluid particles near the boundary inside the air-gap show unphysical oscillat-
ing behavior, which mainly arises from the boundary wall treatment used to
model the solid wall surfaces (Crespo et al., 2015). To improve the results in
the air-gap, this issue first needs to be addressed by developing a new type of
boundary condition to properly resolve the shear stresses.
4.2.2 LNG vessel in carrier ships

Sloshing in the tank is a multiphase problem. Tracing the air–liquid phase is
very important to obtain the correct dynamics of the liquid and the forces act-
ing on the walls due to the movements. This problem is solved by employing
both FVM and SPH. For the FVM model, the RANS–VOF equations pre-
sented in section 3.3.4 and the k − ω turbulence model presented in section
3.3.2.2 are employed. In the SPH approach, the SPH version of the Navier–
Stokes equations presented in section 3.4.1 is applied. The artificial viscosity
modelling approach (Crespo et al., 2015) is used to model the viscous diffu-
sion. Using the SPH approach, only the liquid phase is solved, whereas both
the liquid and air phases are simulated in the RANS–VOF approach. Thus, the
SPH model produces quicker results than the FVM model.
The free surface and the pressure forces presented in Figure 4.18 and Fig-
ure 4.19, respectively, from both models are compared and validated using
experimental data (Souto-Iglesias et al., 2011), showing good accuracy. The
forces presented in Figure 4.20 from both models are also in very good agree-
ment. One of the main ideas in this work is to evaluate the scaling laws, so that
49
Figure 4.18: Snapshots of sloshing from the experiment (Souto-Iglesias et al., 2011),
SPH simulation and VOF simulation for Case 1 at time t = 2.15 sec, 2.55
sec, 3.12 sec and 6.04 sec.
Figure 4.19: Comparison of Pressure (Pa) values from sensor S1 from the experiment
(Souto-Iglesias et al., 2011), SPH simulation and VOF simulation for
Case 1 (Table 3.2)
the forces acting on the walls in a large-scale tank can be estimated from the
simulation result using a small-scale tank. To evaluate this, a large-scale tank
is also simulated using SPH, and the results are used to validate the scaling
approach. The Froude number scaling laws are applied to evaluate the geo-
metric, kinematic and dynamic similarities between the small and large-scale
tanks. The Froude number scaling laws are presented in Table 3.2, where λ
50
Figure 4.20: Comparison of the Force on the left wall of the tank between SPH and
VOF simulations for Case 1 (Table 3.2)
Figure 4.21: Forces on the left wall of the full tank for Case 3 (Table 3.2) SPH simula-
tion Vs. Froude-number-scaled forces on the left wall of the model tank
for Case 1 (Table 3.2) SPH simulation
is the scaling factor, the ratio between the characteristic lengths of the tanks.
The upscaled forces from the small tank are compared with the calculated
forces from the large-scale tank simulations in Figure 4.21. This shows that
the upscaling laws are applicable to the tank sloshing problem; thus simulat-
ing a small-scale tank will be sufficient to predict the forces for the large-scale
tank.
51
Temperature (°C)
SPH
FVM
Figure 4.22: Comparison of temperature contour between SPH and FVM for conduc-
tion in aluminium
Figure 4.23: Temperature profiles on Line 1 (Figure 3.14) at different time instances
from FVM and SPH
4.2.3 Heat conduction

4.2.3.1 Conduction in solid
The model presented in Figure 3.14 is simulated to model the conduction in
an aluminium block by solving the energy conservation equations using both
FVM and SPH. The temperature solution at different time instances obtained
from the models are illustrated and compared in Figure 4.22 and Figure 4.23.
52
The temperature contours (Figure 4.22) and the profiles (Figure 4.23) from
both models are in full agreement.
Temperature (°C)
SPH
FVM
200 sec 500 sec 1000 sec

Figure 4.24: Comparison of temperature contour between SPH and FVM for conduc-
tion in water
Figure 4.25: Temperature profiles on Line 1 (Figure 3.14) at different time instances
from FVM and SPH
4.2.3.2 Conduction in liquid

Heat conduction is simulated for still water in a cavity to evaluate the heat
propagation from the solid boundary to the liquid. The natural convection is
not considered; therefore, the liquid does not move as a result of the tempera-
ture change in the water. This case is simulated mainly to evaluate the thermal
53
diffusivity of water. The thermal diffusivity of water is much lower compared
to aluminium; therefore, the heat propagation in the water is slower than that
of aluminium. The conduction in still water is simulated up to 1000 sec. The
temperature contours and temperature profiles on Line 1 (Figure 3.14) at dif-
ferent time instances are presented in Figure 4.24 and Figure 4.25, respec-
tively. The temperature solutions from both solvers are in good agreement.
Figure 4.26: The velocity and temperature contours in the mini-channel from SPH
and FVM models (a) Velocity contours (b) Temperature contours
Figure 4.27: Temperature profiles in the mini-channel from SPH and FVM models
4.2.4 Heat convection

4.2.4.1 Infinite mini channel
The Poiseuille flow heat transfer is simulated under laminar conditions by em-
ploying FVM and SPH in Paper VIII. The velocity and the temperature con-
54
tours, at different time instances, from SPH and FVM models are presented in
Figure 4.26; they are nearly indistinguishable. The velocity and temperature
profiles are compared and validated using the analytical solution. The tem-
perature profiles along the width of the channel from both SPH and FVM,
presented in Figure 4.27, are in full agreement.
4.2.4.2 Tube bank heat exchanger

The fluid flow and heat transfer in the tube bank heat exchanger are simu-
lated under laminar conditions using FVM and SPH in Paper IX. Figure 4.28
shows the velocity and temperature contours after 30 sec. The velocity fields
from both solvers are similar; however, SPH predicts slightly higher velocity
compared to FVM (Figure 4.28a). The temperature fields from both solvers
are almost identical (Figure 4.28b). The temperature profiles on Y lines (Fig-
ure 3.17b) from the SPH model are in good agreement with the profiles from
the FVM model (Figure 4.29). However, there are slight disagreements in the
temperature profiles just behind the tubes on the Y lines. This is mainly due
to the gap produced by the dynamic boundary condition in DualSPHysics.
(a) (b)
Figure 4.28: Velocity and temperature field in the tube bank heat exchanger from SPH
and FVM models at t=30sec (a) Velocity field (b) Temperature field
The thermal results presented in section 4.2.3 and section 4.2.4 show
that SPH has a great potential for solving thermal problems. The accuracy
achieved by the SPH thermal solver indicates the usefulness of SPH for
conductive and convective heat transfer problems. The current use of the
SPH thermal solver is limited to laminar flow and heat transfer. Additional
55
Figure 4.29: Temperature profiles in the tube bank heat exchanger from SPH and
FVM models at different time instances (a) On line Y=0.03m (Figure
3.17b) (b) On line Y=0.04m (Figure 3.17b) (c) On line Y=0.05m (Figure
3.17b)
investigations on different turbulent flow problems are needed to further

evaluate the stability, accuracy and reliability of the SPH thermal solver.
4.3 Discussion
The results presented in section 4.1 and 4.2 provide an overview of the accu-
racy, reliability and capability of the two employed CFD approaches, RANS
and SPH, to model and predict engineering fluid flow and heat transfer pro-
cesses. This section discusses the observations from the studied cases and the
potential of such CFD approaches to satisfy future demands of the industrial
sector. The research questions formulated in section 1.2 are also discussed.
To improve or optimize any industrial process or product, it is necessary
to have a clear understanding of the underlying physical phenomena. Such
understanding can be attained by employing a high fidelity method such as
CFD. Before addressing an industrial application using CFD simulations, the
purpose of employing this method and the expected outcome from the simula-
tions need to be defined. Many factors need to be considered before choosing
a suitable CFD method. For example, whether the flow can be considered
steady or transient and whether it is possible to apply geometric simplification
using, for instance, symmetry or periodicity aspects. At present, the available
functionality in FVM and SPH solvers has a large influence on this choice.
SPH is a highly flexible method, however, steady-state approach, symmetric
boundary conditions, inlet-outlet boundary conditions, robust treatment for
boundary walls, local refinement of particles and heat transfer are some of
the necessary functionalities that are currently not supported by the majority
of available SPH codes. On the other hand, mesh-based FVM CFD programs
provide much wider flexibility and accurate results while supporting the afore-
mentioned functionalities. However, FVM CFD programs are limited by their
56
numerical performance and the complex workflow, including mesh genera-
tion. The idea of this thesis is to use the positive features from both FVM and
SPH to mitigate the weaknesses of both solvers.
The FVM results presented in section 4.1 can readily be used in the
respective industrial applications to improve the processes and products.
For example, the heat transfer coefficient and the uniformity of the cooling
performance over the steel sheet can be estimated by using the results
presented and the correlation provided in Paper I. The results presented in
Paper II for the re-heating furnace show that this kind of simulation can
be used to diagnose problems like avoiding the formation of iron oxide on
the slab surface by changing the alignment of the burners. The results in
Paper II also provide an idea of the accuracy of the interpolation method
used in the control tool to control the steel slabs. The results presented in
Paper IV and Paper V can be used to improve the design and enhance the
heat transfer in an electrical motor. However, all these models need to be
extended in order to approach reality, for example, considering multiple
jets in the ROT, multiple burners in the reheating furnace and including the
electromagnetics in the rotating machine model, to have realistic output. The
results from the SPH thermal solver presented in section 4.2 illustrate the
accuracy level and clearly show the potential of using SPH for more realistic
engineering thermal problems. However, functionalities such as efficient
particle refinement techniques, robust solid wall treatment, inlet-outlet open
boundary conditions and turbulence models are needed before the SPH can
be applied to model and simulate engineering and industrial problems, like
the ROT, reheating furnace and rotating machines.
Discussion towards the research questions
RQ 1 What are the limitations of RANS when used to simulate complex

industrial applications?
Industrial flow simulations are mostly turbulent. Thus, employing a suitable

turbulence model is a necessity to model the turbulence properly. Among sev-
eral options of turbulence models in CFD simulations (DNS, LES, RANS),
the standard RANS approach is the most economical and robust to numeri-
cally investigate an industrial application (Spalart, 2000). The RANS mod-
elling approach is applicable to a wide range of turbulent flows and has been
validated by many experimental results over decades. The RANS models are
supported by several models and closure laws, among which many are em-
pirical or semi-empirical. The direct numerical simulation (DNS) approach
provides instantaneous results without any averaging or filtration. However,
DNS is extremely expensive due to its mesh and the requirement for large
computational power; thus, it is mainly used for simple cases and for fun-
damental research purposes. In terms of numerical performance, large eddy
57
simulation (LES) rests in between RANS and DNS – some approximation is
involved, but the approach is still very expensive for industrial large simu-
lations. LES is also gradually emerging for industrial applications; however,
it is mainly affordable for some internal flows in industrial applications. The
recent development of HPC technologies has shifted the general trend from
RANS towards LES, giving rise to new hybrid models like RANS–LES. Thus,
the choice between different approaches mainly depends on the level of accu-
racy that is required for a specific simulation and the available computational
resources. The cost estimation for simulation by RANS, LES and DNS, re-
ported by Spalart (Spalart, 2000), shows that LES and DNS are generally still
too expansive to be used for large industrial simulations.
The results from RANS models presented in section 4.1 show the accuracy
level and reliability of the employed approach for simulating a very simplified
portion of the ROT, a small slice of the reheating furnace and the rotating
machine. It is a huge challenge for RANS methods to simulate full complex
industrial applications, which involve, for example, microscopic heat transfer
phenomena such as in boiling and film cooling, and also interaction between
complex secondary flows and mixing (Li et al., 2017). In many cases, the
limitations of RANS models are exposed when trying to predict such thermal
flows in industrial applications, where they suffer from severe instability
and divergence issues. By using RANS models in this thesis, it has been
possible to produce results with acceptable accuracy; however, only a small
portion of each process is simulated, mainly due to the poor computational
performance. For instance, the model shows unstable behavior when
simulating interactions between multiple nearby jets at the ROT. Another
limitation is the requirement for a large number of mesh elements to resolve
thin liquid film, combustion chemistry and the very thin gap between the rotor
and stator, for the ROT, reheating furnace and rotating machine, respectively.
The complexity involved in the mesh generation pre-processing phase also
requires a large amount of knowledge of the flow and the physics occurring
in the process. For example, refining all the local regions, like boundary
layers, to resolve the shear forces and the thermal gradients, or resolving the
regions where interfaces appear in multiple phases or where interactions may
take place. All this makes it cumbersome to generate a good mesh while
maintaining a time-efficient workflow in industrial R&D. The accuracy and
speed are always important factors that need to be balanced for industrial
flow simulations. The flexibility to balance the accuracy and the speed of a
RANS-based solver is severely restricted due to the required time and effort
during re-meshing. Performing a large-scale simulation in a reasonable time
is only possible by considering very coarse mesh, when the reliability of
the results may be questionable. In summary, covering small details while
simulating large-scale processes like the ROT and furnace are beyond the
capability of RANS solvers with currently available computational resources.
If the numerical results are to be used to control a process, a fast and flexible
58
method other than mesh-based RANS methods must be used to produce
large-scale simulation results in a reasonable time scale. To overcome these
limitations, the general trend is to use mesh-free particle methods, hybrid
methods or model-reduction approaches. However, most of the mesh-free
and hybrid methods listed in Figure 2.1 are still under development, and thus
a complete knowledge of their applicability to all the engineering fluid flow
simulations is not available. Other emerging approaches to address large
simulations are a multizonal approach or coupled methods. In a multi-zonal
approach, large processes are usually divided into different zones, each
zone is solved independently, and the results from different zones are then
shared (Hu et al., 2018). In coupled methods, different sections of the same
process are solved using different methods based on their capabilities, and
the solution is shared or transferred between different zones (Kumar et al.,
2015). To overcome some of the aforementioned limitations of RANS, SPH
was selected as an alternative in this thesis. Thus, within the framework of
this thesis, SPH thermal equations are implemented in the open-source SPH
code DualSPHysics. This allows to SPH or a hybrid SPH–FVM approach
to be used for industrial thermal simulations in future. The main idea is to
overcome the limitations and benefit from both SPH and FVM methods.
RQ 2 Under what circumstances can SPH replace or complement RANS?
The growing use of SPH in different engineering CFD applications in the

last two decades clearly indicates its potential in the field of CFD (Shadloo
et al., 2016). The main motivation to use SPH in this thesis is its mesh-
free feature, flexibility, robustness for different flow simulations, including
free-surface flows, visualization, ease of use and straightforward possibility
of adaptation by adding new multiphysics functionality. SPH is an emerging
method, and thus many functionalities are currently missing in available SPH
codes; for example, steady-state, symmetry condition, inlet-outlet boundary
conditions, robust general wall boundary conditions and multi-resolution par-
ticle, which are necessary for many industrial flow and thermal simulations.
From a theoretical perspective, SPH provides comparable accuracy to RANS-
based FVM for a wide range of problems. However, the current development
status and the support for the aforementioned missing functionalities in SPH
will have a large role in the choice between SPH and FVM (Shadloo et al.,
2016). Turbulence is another factor that requires special care and effort when
modelling turbulent flows. Although methods like RANS based k − ε models
are easy to implement in SPH, it is preferable to develop a turbulence model
within the SPH framework to preserve the general principles (J. Monaghan,
2017, 2011). In many cases, the theory is available in the literature, however
the development is slow because of the small user community.
SPH is commonly used for coastal engineering problems, mainly due to the
numerical efficiency and robustness when solving free-surface flows (J. Mon-
59
aghan, 1994). Therefore, the majority of SPH developments are centered on
coastal engineering problems. For free-surface flows, solving only the liq-
uid phase provides sufficiently accurate results without any complex surface
tracking algorithms, like those used in the RANS–VOF approach. This is a big
advantage for flow problems such as those in the ROT or tank sloshing. Tank
sloshing is one of the type of problems where SPH is the best fit and provides
higher efficiency than FVM. The diverse applications of SPH include free-
surface flows, multiphase flows, flows with floating bodies, fluid–structure in-
teractions, blood flow, etc. (J. Monaghan, 2012; Shadloo et al., 2016).
In this thesis, the main focus is on solving thermal problems. For heat
transfer applications, it is very important to resolve the hydrodynamic and
thermal boundary layers to efficiently calculate the viscous stress and thermal
gradient, respectively. For thermal problems, it is a common approach for
mesh-based methods to locally refine the mesh close to the wall where
heat transfer takes place. By contrast, a uniform particle resolution is the
most common choice for SPH developers; this is very inefficient for many
industrial applications. This is because, all the available adaptive particle
refinement algorithms based on splitting and coalescing are very sensitive
due to strict stability and accuracy criteria, which makes the SPH algorithm
very complex and numerically expensive (Shadloo et al., 2016). The rotating
machine application simulated using SPH in Paper VI illustrates the need
for such local refinement of particles in the air-gap between the rotor and
the stator. Therefore, multi-resolution is one of the most important issues
that must be addressed in order to use SPH in new industrial applications.
The SPH thermal solver presented in this thesis illustrates the accuracy of
SPH when solving laminar heat transfer problems. To use the SPH thermal
solver for industrial problems with turbulent flows, it is necessary to use the
multi-resolution particle feature to resolve the boundary layers. Therefore,
SPH can be efficient for flows where boundary layers are less important, and
for flows where the necessity of the multi-resolution particle feature can be
avoided. Currently, replacing RANS-based FVM with SPH is not an easy
choice, other than for free-surface flows. SPH can be used to complement
FVM for solving flows with complex fluid–structure interactions, high
deformation and interaction between complex secondary flows. SPH can also
complement RANS using a coupled FVM–SPH approach.
RQ 3 What is the potential of using SPH in on-line control tools?
The accuracy of SPH for industrial fluid flow simulations and its flexibil-
ity inspire its use for industrial process control purposes. The use of SPH for
online applications is decided by number of factors; for example, the computa-
tional cost, accuracy, efficiency and knowledge of applicability. The accuracy
and speed of a SPH solver can easily be controlled by adjusting particle res-
olution, the influence radius and the number of neighboring particles for the
60
interactions. SPH solvers in general perform slower than FVM solvers due to
the requirement for a large number of neighboring particles to achieve similar
accuracy and the Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) condition (Courant et al.,
1967), which applies to the small time steps (Shadloo et al., 2016). Moreover,
the accuracy of the solver is tightly linked to the reliability and the computa-
tional cost of the simulation. However, because of the simplicity of the SPH
algorithms, it is easy to parallelize the code to achieve significant speed-up by
using HPC facilities like GPGPU (general purpose graphic processing unit)
architecture-based parallel clusters, which often allow the simulation to run
in real time (S. Kim & Park, 2014; Ji et al., 2012; Du & Kanai, 2014; Nie et
al., 2015; He Yan et al., 2009). This is why SPH is heavily used in computer
graphics industries for visualization of special fluid flow and thermal effects in
films and games. SPH has a great potential to be used for a number of indus-
trial processes if the simulation can be performed quickly enough to meet the
time-scale of an online control tool. Real-time simulation can be achieved for
flow problems involving free surfaces, such as sloshing in a tank. The simula-
tion results for the sloshing tank presented in Paper VII shows good potential
for use in online control tool in ships. The tanks can be simulated in small
scale in real time, and then Froude number scaling laws can be applied to
predict the forces on the wall for a large tank. Among the weaknesses of this
approach, there are several SPH parameters, such as the influence radius, the
viscosity and speed of sound, which need to be tuned for every application to
reach a certain accuracy. This is a major bottleneck when using SPH. This kind
of parameter tuning for new applications leaves uncertainties which need to be
resolved in the future development of SPH by developing best practice guide-
lines. Developments like local particle refinement and best practice guidelines
are needed to make SPH truly useful for complex industrial processes and to
use the results in online control tools in appropriate cases.
61
5. Summary of appended papers
The included papers are briefly summarized in this chapter. The author’s
contributions to the appended papers are also clearly stated here.
• Paper I: Heat transfer by liquid jets impinging on a hot flat surface

(Hosain, Bel Fdhila, & Daneryd, 2015)
Several CFD models to simulate impinging water jet cooling at ROT
cooling process in hot rolling steel industries are developed in this
paper. The analysis presented in this paper contributes to impinging jet
cooling technology from both fundamental and applied perspectives.
The thermal performance of the liquid impinging jet is analyzed in
terms of single and multiple water jets impinging on a hot steel surface.
A 3D model is developed to analyze the cooling effectiveness of the
impinging water jet for hot rolling industries. A 2D axisymmetric
model is also used to perform a parametric analysis to analyze the
influence of the flow rate on the heat transfer. A correlation to predict
the radial position of the maximum heat transfer co-efficient is also
given based on the numerical results. Furthermore, a high fidelity 3D
model of a double jet is developed to simulate jet–jet interaction in
terms of flow and heat transfer. The presented results are validated
using available theoretical and experimental results from published
literature. The 2D parametric analysis shows a linear relationship
between the flow rate and the average surface heat flux. A significant
influence of flow rates on the diameter of the stagnation zone is also
observed from the simulation results, which may greatly influence the
uniformity of the cooling performance when the steel sheet is cooled
using an array of jets.
• Paper II: CFD Modeling of Real Scale Slab Reheating Furnace

(Hosain et al., 2016)
In this paper, a 3D full-scale CFD model is developed to simulate
the complex flow and combustion inside an industrial slab re-heating
furnace for hot rolling steel industries. The real operating conditions
from the steel plant are used to simulate the temperature distribution
inside the steel slabs. The conduction, convection and radiation heat
transfer are simulated by resolving the detailed combustion from the
62
liquefied natural gas burners. The simulated gas temperature inside
the furnace is validated using measured data from the steel plant.
The simulated heating profile of the steel slab is also compared to
the predicted heating profile from the online control tool. Numerical
results show a high degree of recirculation inside the furnace, which
is consequently responsible for forming iron oxide layers on the steel
slabs, one of the common problems encountered in the hot rolling steel
plant.
• Paper III: Literature Review of Accelerated CFD Simulation Methods

towards Online Application.(Hosain & Fdhila, 2015)
In this paper, a literature survey is performed to identify the available
CFD methods for solving industrial problems related to multi-phase
flow, free-surface flow and heat transfer. The main purpose of the
survey is to identify CFD methods that can be used to perform
simulations in real time or near real time to be used in the online
control system for decision support during the ongoing process
operation. The reviewed methods are presented by classification into
different families together with a brief overview of each method.
• Paper IV: Taylor-Couette flow and transient heat transfer inside the
annulus air-gap of rotating electrical machines. (Hosain, Bel Fdhila,
& Rönnberg, 2017)
In this paper, a simplified 3D model of a rotating machine (motor)
consisting of a rotor and a stator is developed to analyze the transient
fluid flow and heat transfer inside the machine. The main focus of the
article is evaluation of the Taylor–Couette flow heat transfer in the
air-gap between the rotor and the stator. The complex flow patterns
due to the aerodynamic friction and the turbulence generated by the
rotor wafters are discussed and their influence on the heat transfer is
also highlighted. The transient effects induced by the rotor wafters
introduces oscillations to the Taylor–Couette vortices, which result in
oscillations of the hotspots. However, the observed oscillations do not
influence the global thermal performance.
• Paper V: Air-Gap Heat Transfer in Rotating Electrical Machines: A

Parametric Study. (Hosain & Fdhila, 2017)
This paper is a continuation of work based on Paper IV, in which
a parametric analysis is performed by varying the air-gap width
between the rotor and the stator and the rotation speed. The heat
transfer in the air-gap of a rotating machine is analyzed in detail
by performing 9 simulations combining 3 different air-gap widths
63
and 3 different rotation speeds. The results from all 9 models are
compared, and the efficiency of heat transfer is discussed. The heat
transfer coefficients from all the models are validated successfully
by available correlations from experimental data. The results show
that the heat transfer coefficient increases with increase in rotation
speed and the air-gap width. The heat transfer is enhanced when
Taylor vortices are present. The Taylor vortices disappear with an air-
gap of 1 mm or less, thus the heat transfer coefficient drops significantly.
• Paper VI: Air Flow inside Rotating Electrical Machines: A

Comparison between Finite Volume and SPH Method. (Hosain,
Rönnberg, & Bel Fdhila, 2017)
In this paper, the SPH method is introduced for the first time to
simulate the air-flow inside the rotating machine. A simplified model
geometry representing a fully enclosed motor consisting of a rotor
and a stator is used to model the airflow using both the mesh-based
finite volume method (FVM) and the mesh-free particle-based SPH.
The results from both methods are compared and their limitations are
discussed. The results presented in this paper show the ability of SPH
to capture the complex aerodynamics with an accuracy comparable to
the results from the FVM model.
• Paper VII: Numerical Investigation of Liquid Sloshing in Carrier Ship

Fuel Tanks. (Hosain et al., 2018)
This paper presents and compares simulations of liquid sloshing in a
carrier ship fuel tank using SPH and the VOF method. A downscaled
2D geometry of a partially filled tank is considered to investigate
the sloshing under sinusoidal roll motion. The main purpose of this
study is to assess the accuracy and efficiency of the two numerical
methods. The application of scaling laws, which are often used to
reduce the size of a large complicated system, is also evaluated. The
pressure and forces acting on the walls of the tank are numerically
calculated and validated using available experimental data. Due to its
relatively short simulation time, SPH is also used for the full-scale
geometry, to validate the downscaling approach. The SPH method
shows higher efficiency when capturing the sloshing dynamics, while
producing the results much more quickly than the RANS–VOF
model. Moreover, the results from the SPH model indicate that the
Froude number scaling law can be applied to the tank sloshing problem.
• Paper VIII: Simulation and validation of flow and heat transfer in an

infinite mini-channel using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics. (M. L.
64
Hosain, Fdhila & Kyprianidis) (Accepted for publication in Energy
procedia)
In this paper, laminar Poiseuille flow heat transfer in an infinitely
long mini-channel is simulated. The main purpose of this study is to
investigate the usability of the mesh-free particle-based SPH method
for convective heat transfer problems. To evaluate this capability, we
chose to solve a simple well-established problem: the laminar flow and
heat transfer through an infinitely long mini-channel. The same case is
also solved using FVM. The simulated flow and heat transfer by the
SPH model is compared to the solution from FVM and the analytical
solution. The results show that the SPH thermal solver achieves a
highly satisfactory accuracy level.
• Paper IX: Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics modeling of transient

conduction and convection heat transfer. (M. L. Hosain, Dominguez,
Crespo, Fdhila & Kyprianidis) (Journal Manuscript)
This paper implements the thermal equations in the open-source
SPH code DualSPHysics. DualSPHysics is the most user-friendly
and popular open-source code written in C++ based on the weakly
compressible SPH (WCSPH). However, DualSPHysics is currently
capable of solving only fluid flow, which limits its use for problems
related to heat transfer. The main contribution of this article is the
implementation of the energy conservation equation in DualSPHysics,
which extends its functionality to solving heat transfer problems. The
work was performed in tight collaboration with the main developers
of DualSPHysics, from the University of Vigo, Spain. In this article,
several classical 2D laminar heat transfer problems are solved to verify
the accuracy of the SPH thermal model. The cases are chosen for
the ability to test our code for both conduction and convection heat
transfer. The cases involve conduction in an aluminium block and in
still water in a cavity, laminar water flow between two infinite parallel
plates and a tube bank heat exchanger. The same cases are solved
using FVM to benchmark the solutions from both solvers. The thermal
solution achieved with the SPH thermal solver are in good agreement
with the solution from the FVM solver, demonstrating the efficiency of
SPH for solving laminar heat conduction and convection heat transfer
problems.
Author’s Contributions to the appended papers:

The author developed all the numerical models used for the simulations,
performed all the simulations and analyzed the results presented in Paper I
– Paper VI, Paper VIII and Paper IX. The author also developed the SPH
65
model, performed the SPH simulations and analyzed the results in Paper
VII, while, the RANS–VOF simulations in Paper VII were performed by
co-author Ulf Sand from ABB corporate research. The author reviewed
relevant literature reported in all the appended papers and wrote the majority
of all the appended papers, serving as first author. Valuable inputs, comments
and suggestions to improve the papers were received from the co-authors
of the respective papers. All the work presented in the appended papers
was performed under the supervision of the main supervisor and the
co-supervisors.
Limitations of the studies

The thesis presents CFD simulations of several industrial flow and heat
transfer. The limitations of the work are as follows:
• The jet–jet distance considered in the double-jet model in Paper I is

much larger than usually encountered in the ROT cooling process in a
steel plant. This is because the RANS–VOF solver suffered from severe
instability and divergence issues with smaller jet–jet distances. Further-
more, boiling is a typical phenomenon at the ROT cooling process due
to the high temperature conditions and the steel sheet usually moves at
a certain speed. In this study, the steel sheet is considered as stationary
and a temperature below 100 ◦ C is considered to avoid boiling phenom-
ena in order to simplify the problem.
• The model geometry for the rotating machine application in Paper IV

is a design used for model assessment and verification purposes, and
is intended to resemble a low voltage motor. The air-gap between the
rotor and the stator is considered at 5 mm, whereas it is typically about
1 mm. However, to mitigate this limitation, a 1mm gap was considered
in the parametric study presented in Paper V. The reason for using a
larger air-gap was to be able to use the same model for SPH in order
to make comparison with FVM. Resolving a 1 mm air-gap in the SPH
model was impractical due to the limitation of uniform resolution for
the whole rotating machine.
• The SPH thermal model presented in Paper IX is used to solve laminar

flow and heat transfer cases only. To model turbulent flows, more robust
boundary conditions and turbulence models have to be implemented.
66
6. Conclusions
This chapter presents the major conclusions of the thesis.
The main focus in this thesis is the analysis of complex fluid flow and heat
transfer in selected industrial processes to be able to improve, diagnose and
control them. To improve or optimize any industrial process or product, it is
essential to have a clear understanding of the underlying physical phenom-
ena. The most reliable approaches, such as experiments and measurements
to analyze a process or product, are not always preferable, due to the uncer-
tainty and associated cost. It is often extremely difficult to reproduce the real
phenomena with experiments. Furthermore, it is often not possible to per-
form detailed measurements to describe a large-scale process like the slab
re-heating furnace, due to the unavailability of suitable measurement tech-
nologies. Therefore, the fluid flow and heat transfer in the selected industrial
applications have been simulated in this thesis by employing two different
CFD approaches, RANS and SPH. The thesis provides detailed insight into
different processes and products, from both fundamental and applied physics
perspectives. The strengths and limitations of the introduced CFD approaches
are highlighted and the future of such approaches for industrial applications
is discussed. One of the main goals of this thesis is to introduce and use SPH
for industrial flow and thermal simulations. To evaluate the capability and
efficiency of SPH to solve thermal problems, SPH thermal equations are im-
plemented into the open-source code DualSPHysics. The SPH thermal solver
is used to solve heat conduction and convection problems to illustrate and
compare the accuracy with the RANS-based FVM method.
The four industrial applications and the theoretical cases simulated in this
thesis are jet impingement cooling in the ROT cooling process, slab re-heating
furnace, rotating machines, sloshing in a moving tank, tube bank heat ex-
changer and Poiseuille flow heat transfer. The rotating machine, sloshing in
tank, Poiseuille flow heat transfer and the heat exchanger are solved using
both FVM and SPH. The impinging jet cooling and the re-heating furnace
are simulated using FVM. The idea in this thesis is to use the positive fea-
tures from both FVM and SPH, combining their strengths and mitigating their
limitations, to simulate large industrial processes. The simulation results from
ROT cooling and the furnace exhibit multiphysics phenomena with interac-
tions between secondary flows. The multiple space and time scales present
in large industrial processes like the ROT and the furnace make it extremely
67
challenging to simulate such flows. In some cases, such as in the case of ROT,
FVM failed to resolve the interactions between multiple streams from water
jets impinging very close to each other. The FVM solver suffers from se-
vere instability and divergence issues due to the splashing in the ROT and
high degrees of re-circulations in the furnace. The mesh-based RANS solvers
are limited in such industrial applications. Therefore, an alternative approach,
SPH, is implemented in this thesis to shed some light on the potential of us-
ing SPH for complex industrial flows and thermal simulations. However, the
SPH thermal solver needs to be complemented by developing more general
and robust boundary conditions and suitable turbulence models to solve in-
dustrial turbulent flow and thermal problems. Several other functionalities,
such as inlet-outlet boundary conditions and multiresolution particles, need to
be implemented before the SPH method can be considered as an established
method for the type of industrial applications analyzed here. To complement
the capabilities and mitigate the limitations of both SPH and FVM, a cou-
pled FVM–SPH solver could be an interesting solution for large industrial
simulations in the future. However, targeting such an approach requires fur-
ther justifications. The SPH thermal development in this thesis is an important
step towards a coupled FVM–SPH fast thermal solver for industrial flow and
thermal simulations.
68
7. Future work
This chapter suggests some possible potential future work based on the
discussion, described research challenges, limitations of the work and the
identified research need.
• The impinging jet model presented in Paper I can be extended by con-

sidering multiple jets with a smaller separation than the one considered.
Parametric studies could be performed by varying the nozzle diameter
and the distance between the nozzle and the steel surface to investigate
their influence on the cooling efficiency.
• The reheating furnace simulated in paper II consists of several zones.

In this paper only the preheating zone (Zone1) is simulated. The model
can be extended by including more zones of the furnace.
• The sloshing in a partially filled tank in Paper VII is simulated under

sinusoidal rolling motion. However, in reality the sloshing is a result of
combined forces from rolling, yawing and pitching motions of a ship.
The presented model could be extended in future by considering yawing
and pitching motion to simulate a more realistic case scenario. To do
this the model needs to be extended to a 3D domain.
• The SPH thermal development in Paper IX is limited to laminar flow

cases due to the unavailability of a suitable boundary condition in Dual-
SPHysics that can resolve a thin boundary layer. The thermal develop-
ment needs to be complemented by adding new features such as robust
wall boundary condition, local particle refinement and suitable turbu-
lence models to enhance the applicability to industrial turbulent flows
and thermal problems.
• A coupled FVM–SPH solver can be developed to simulate large indus-

trial processes to overcome the highlighted limitations of both methods.
69
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77
Appendix
Velocity and gravitation effect on the interface of the water jet

The gravitational effect on the interface of a free surface impinging jet can
be described using the Continuity equation and the Bernoulli’s equation. The
following assumptions are made for the derivation:
• The water jet remains circular after it leaves the nozzle.
• The total energy of the jet is conserved.
Gravitation and velocity effect on the free surface
Let, U f , U are the jet velocities, d, D are the jet diameters, A1 , A2 are the
cross section areas of the jet, z0 , Z are the distances from the plate and P1 , P2
are pressures at h1 and h2 respectively. The gravitational constant is g and the
fluid density is ρ.
Then, the continuity equation can be written as:
A1 u1 = A2 u2
⇒ (πd 2 /4)U f = (πD2 /4)U
⇒ d 2U f = D2U
⇒ d 2 /D2 = U/U f
79
Now, the Bernoulli’s equation can be written as follows:
U f 2 /2 + gz0 + P1 /ρ = U 2 /2 + gZ + P2 /ρ
⇒ U f 2 /2 + gz0 = U 2 /2 + gZ (Let, P1 = P2 = 1atm)
⇒ U 2 = U f 2 + 2g(z0 − Z)
⇒ U 2 /UF 2 = 1 + 2g(z0 − Z)/U f 2
⇒ d 4 /D4 = 1 + 2g(z0 − Z)/U f 2 (substituting,U/U f = d 2 /D2 )
⇒ d/D = (1 + 2g(z0 − Z)/U f 2 )1/4
⇒ D = d(1 + 2g(z0 − Z)/U f 2 )−1/4
80

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Mälardalen University Doctoral Dissertation 282

Fluid flow and heat transfer simulations

Address: P.O. Box 883, SE-721 23 Västerås. Sweden

Address: P.O. Box 325, SE-631 05 Eskilstuna. Sweden

FLUID FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER SIMULATIONS

School of Business, Society and Engineering

FLUID FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER SIMULATIONS

som för avläggande av teknologie doktorsexamen i energi- och miljöteknik vid

Fakultetsopponent: Professor Moncho Gomez Gesteira, University of Vigo

Akademin för ekonomi, samhälle och teknik

Energibehovet och miljöpåverkan från industrisektorn är växande problem

Reprints were made with permission from the publishers.

1.1 Relation between the papers and the research questions . . . . . 5

3.1 Mesh information for the FVM models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Figure 1.1: Schematic showing the relationship between the research

Figure 2.1: Hierarchical classification of methods in CFD . . . . . . . . . . 11

Figure 3.1: Methodological approach for CFD simulations . . . . . . . . . . 16

Figure 4.1: Schematic of impinging jet cooling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 39

CFD Computational Fluid Dynamics

CPU Central Processing Unit

CUDA Compute Unified Device Architecture

DBC Dynamic Boundary Condition

DNS Direct Numerical Simulation

FDM Finite Difference Method

FEM Finite Element Method

FFD Fast Fluid Dynamics

FMM Fast Multipole Methods

FVM Finite Volume Method

GHG Greenhouse Gas

GPGPU General Purpose Graphic Processing Unit

HPC High Performance Computing

LBM Lattice Boltzmann Method

LES Large Eddie Simulation

LNG Liquefied Natural Gas

LPG Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Propane)

g Gravitation acceleration [m/s2 ]

Gk Generation of turbulence kinetic energy due to the mean velocity

gp Air-gap width between the rotor and the stator [m]

H Height of tank [m]

h Smoothing radius [m]

h(r) Liquid film thickness [m]

H1 Height of initial water level [m]

ht Heat transfer coefficient [W/m2 K]

k Turbulence kinetic energy [m2 /s2 ]

L Characteristic length [m]

Nu Nusselt number [-]

Nu0 Nusselt number at stagnation point [-]

Pr Prandtl number [-]

q00 Heat flux [W/m2 ]

r Radial position [m]

r1 Radius of region I [m]

r2 Radius of region II [m]

r3 Radius of region III [m]

ra Vector position of particle a [m]

rb Vector position of particle b [m]

rp Distance between two particles [m]

T1 Time for a full roll motion [s]

u∗ Friction velocity at the nearest wall [m/s]

u0 Fluctuating velocity [m/s]

Uf Fluid velocity at inlet [m/s]

W Smoothing kernel function [-]

w Width of tank [m]

x Cartesian axis direction [m]