Image Theses and Dissertations Optimization of Tow-Steered Composite Wind Turbine Blades for Static Aeroelastic Performance The concept of passive aeroelastic tailoring is explored to maximize the performance of the NREL 5-MW wind turbine blade in a uniform flow. Variable-angle tow composite materials model the spanwise-variable wind turbine blade design to allow material-adaptive bend-twist coupling under static aerodynamic loading. A constrained optimization algorithm determines the composite fiber angles along the blade span for four inflow conditions ranging from cut-in to rated wind speeds. View Item
Image Theses and Dissertations Computational study of flow past arrays of plates in the vicinity of surfaces Flows past bluff bodies are encountered in many engineering applications. The bluff body situated in the flow experience a significant amount of pressure drag force. Therefore, it is important to predict flow conditions around bluff bodies when designing bridges, platforms, pipelines near seabed, offshore structures, and hydropower systems. In several engineering applications, structures could often be placed near surfaces. Transient flows past rectangular plates in the vicinity of surfaces are investigated in this study. View Item
Image Theses and Dissertations Computational Study of Desalination by Membranes Water desalination by membranes constitutes the majority of the low-quality water purication systems that extends across many different techniques. This study considers transport phenomena in reverse osmosis (RO) and vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) modules using computational techniques. Reverse osmosis is a pressure-driven separation method using semi-permeable membranes featuring nanoporous structures. View Item
Image Theses and Dissertations Design, Modeling, and Prototyping of a Hydrokinetic Turbine Unit for River Application Marine hydrokinetic technology is a fast growing field that aims to capture energy from flowing water. Micro-hydrokinetic technologies are a subset of marine hydrokinetic systems, operating at much smaller scales generally considered less than 100 kW of power production. Small-scale production is applicable for disaster relief and for military application. A propeller-type hydrokinetic design with a high solidity was designed to meet the needs of the Marine Corps in providing 500 Watts of continuous power while also providing portability. View Item
Image Theses and Dissertations Computational Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer Analysis for a Novel Heat Exchanger View Item
Image Theses and Dissertations Pulmonary Gas Transport and Drug Delivery in a Patient Specific Lung Model During Invasive High Frequency Oscillatory Ventilation The objective of this dissertation research was to investigate gas transport, mixing and aerosol-drug delivery during high frequency oscillatory ventilation (HFOV) for various ventilator specific conditions that are vital to critical care clinicians. A large eddy simulation based computational fluid dynamics approach was used in a patient specific human lung model to analyze the effect of invasive HFOV on patient management. View Item
Image Theses and Dissertations Computational Study of Gas Separation Using Membrane Computational fluid dynamics simulations are conducted for multicomponent fluid flows in a channel containing spacers. The channel is bounded by membrane boundaries. A new and unique model has been presented for the treatment of the membrane boundaries in the separation of CO2 from CH4 in a binary mixture. The equation governing the flux through the membrane is derived from the first principle. The membrane is modeled as a functional surface, where the mass fluxes of each species will be determined based on the local partial pressures, the permeability, and the selectivity of the membrane. View Item
Image Theses and Dissertations Characterizing Performance Enhancements in Vacuum Membrane Distillation using Computational Methods Membrane distillation (MD) is a separation technology driven by low-cost thermal energy and is effective on highly concentrated aqueous solutions. This process has been studied extensively in lab-scale environments. The key indicators of performances losses in the lab, namely radial temperature polarization, have been characterized and there are many published works mitigating temperature polarization with thermo-fluidic optimizations. View Item
Image Theses and Dissertations Computational Study and Optimization of Nanoparticle Focusing in Microfluidic Devices This study investigates nanoparticle focusing through two distinct methodologies. Thermophoresis is applied within a microfluidic platform featuring slanted grooves, which induce transverse flow, achieving a substantial temperature gradient of 10K/50 um. This configuration successfully concentrates nanoparticles, achieving up to a four-fold increase for 100nm particles and a three-fold increase for pseudo HIV particles, with findings corroborated by numerical simulations conducted in OpenFOAM. View Item
