Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

Spring 12-31-1982

Degree Name

Doctor of Engineering Science in Chemical Engineering

Department

Chemical Engineering and Chemistry

First Advisor

Richard C. Progelhof

Second Advisor

Wing T. Wong

Third Advisor

George Y. Lei

Fourth Advisor

Ching-Rong Huang

Abstract

A computer model for the withdrawl and buildup of the fluid from the pool bounded on the horizontal, rotating, cylindrical surface has been developed. For a incompressible Newtonian fluid, the model is based upon the modified SOLA-SURF algorithm to solve the finite-difference form of Navier-Stokes equations on primitive variables. A hybird of centered and partial donor cell differencings is applied to the momentum convective flux. In each time cycle, the cell velocity is adjusted by the pressure corrector and iterates to satisfy the equation of continuity. The free surface position is approximated by a surface height function derived from kinematic equation. The flow field moves under control of constant fluid volume. When the bottom boundary is a free surface, it is necessary to make good initial guess of the velocities for the newly entered cells.

An example computation predicts the onset velocity of rimming flow within 5% of that of an empirical correlation for unsaturated polyester. It indicates the correlation can be applied to the fluid of medium range viscosity. The fluid velocities in the vicinity of rigid boundary are close to rotating velocity. Backward velocities occur near the free surface. The transient flow phenomena is qualitatively in agreement with the experimental observations. The criterion of constant fluid volume is held within 10%. Singularity resulted in the calculation may be an indication that the assumption of no-slip boundary condition at contact line is invalid. The size of time step is found very critical to the stability of computation.

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