Shih-Kai Chien¹, Tzu-Hsiang Yen¹, Yue-Tzu Yang¹, Chao-Kuang Chen^1,2

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.29, No.3, pp. 163-174, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.029.163

Abstract Conventional proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have a straight gas flow serpentine channel, and hence the reactant gases are transferred to the catalyst layers as a result of diffusion alone. Since the diffusion process is inherently slow, the electrical performance of such PEMFCs is inevitably limited. In an attempt to improve the PEMFC performance, this study replaces the straight channel with containing different type of obstacles and conducts a series of lattice Boltzmann method simulations to investigate the flow field phenomena induced in a viscous liquid as it flows along the serpentine channel at… More >

Q. Ma¹, C. Levy², M. Perl³

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.29, No.2, pp. 95-110, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.029.095

Abstract Networks of radial and longitudinally-coplanar, internal, surface cracks are typical in rifled, autofrettaged, gun barrels. In two previous papers, the separate effects of large arrays of either radial or longitudinally-coplanar semi-elliptical, internal, surface cracks in a thick-walled, cylindrical, pressure vessel under both ideal and realistic autofrettage were studied. When pressure is considered solely, radial crack density and longitudinal crack spacing were found to have opposing effects on the prevailing stress intensity factor, K_IP. Furthermore, the addition of the negative stress intensity factor (SIF), K_IA, resulting from the residual stress field due to autofrettage, whether ideal or… More >

M. Haji Mohammadi¹

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.29, No.2, pp. 75-94, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.029.075

Abstract In this paper, the truly Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) method is extended for computation of steady incompressible flows, governed by the Navier--Stokes equations (NSE), in vorticity-stream function formulation. The present method is a truly meshless method based on only a number of randomly located nodes. The formulation is based on two equations including stream function Poisson equation and vorticity advection-dispersion-reaction equation (ADRE). The meshless method is based on a local weighted residual method with the Heaviside step function and quartic spline as the test functions respectively over a local subdomain. Radial basis functions (RBF) interpolation… More >

Leevan Ling¹, Tomoya Takeuchi²

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.29, No.1, pp. 45-54, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.029.045

Abstract The method of fundamental solutions is coupled with the boundary control technique to solve the Cauchy problems of the Laplace Equations. The main idea of the proposed method is to solve a sequence of direct problems instead of solving the inverse problem directly. In particular, we use a boundary control technique to obtain an approximation of the missing Dirichlet boundary data; the Tikhonov regularization technique and the L-curve method are employed to achieve such goal stably. Once the boundary data on the whole boundary are known, the numerical solution to the Cauchy problem can be More >

V.C. Mariani¹, E.E.M. Alonso², S. Peters³

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.29, No.1, pp. 15-28, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.029.015

Abstract An application of Newton's method for linearization of advective terms given by the discretization on unstructured Voronoi meshes for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations is proposed and evaluated in this article. One of the major advantages of the unstructured approach is its application to very complex geometrical domains and the mesh is adaptable to features of the flow. Moreover, in this work comparisons with the literature results in bi-dimensional lid-driven cavities for different Reynolds numbers allow us to assess the numerical properties of the new proposed finite-volume scheme. Results for the components of the velocity, and More >

N.Kringos¹, A.Scarpas¹, A.P.S. Selvadurai²

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.28, No.3, pp. 147-160, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.028.147

Abstract This paper presents a numerical approach for the modeling of water flow induced mastic erosion from a permeable asphalt mix and is part of an ongoing effort to model moisture-induced damage in asphalt mixes. Due to the complex composite structure of asphalt mixtures, moisture can infiltrate in various ways into the components and have an adverse effect on its mechanical performance. Depending on the gradation of the asphalt aggregates and the mixing procedure, asphalt structures with a variable permeability may result. Open-graded asphalt mixes are designed with a high interconnected air void content to serve More >

Atsuya Oishi¹, Shinobu Yoshimura²

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.28, No.2, pp. 127-146, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.028.127

Abstract This paper describes new methods based on genetic approaches for finding approximating expressions of local coordinates of a contact point in a local contact search process. A contact search process generally consists of the following two phases: a global search phase for finding the nearest node-segment pair and a local search phase for finding an exact local coordinate of the contact point within the segment. The local contact search can be regarded as the mapping from the coordinates of nodes to the local coordinates of contact points. In this paper, two methods are proposed to… More >

S. S. Chen¹, Y. H. Liu^1,2, Z. Z. Cen¹

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.28, No.1, pp. 39-56, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.028.039

Abstract In most engineering applications, solutions derived from the lower-bound theorem of plastic limit analysis are particularly valuable because they provide a safe estimate of the load that will cause plastic collapse. A solution procedure based on the meshless local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) method is proposed for lower-bound limit analysis. This is the first work for lower-bound limit analysis by this meshless local weak form method. In the construction of trial functions, the natural neighbour interpolation (NNI) is employed to simplify the treatment of the essential boundary conditions. The discretized limit analysis problem is solved numerically with More >

F. Cosmi¹

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.27, No.3, pp. 187-196, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.027.187

Abstract The Cell Method is a recent numerical method that can be applied in several fields of physics and engineering. In this paper, the elastodynamics formulation is extended to include system internal damping, highlighting some interesting characteristics of the method. The developed formulation leads to an explicit solving system. The mass matrix is diagonal (without lumping) and in the most general case a time-dependent damping coefficient can be defined for each node. \newline Accuracy and convergence rate have been tested with reference to the classical problem of a particle free vibration with viscous damping.
An application More >

Chia-Cheng Tsai¹

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.27, No.3, pp. 151-162, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.027.151

Abstract In this paper we develop analytical particular solutions for the polyharmonic and the products of Helmholtz-type partial differential operators with Chebyshev polynomials at right-hand side. Our solutions can be written explicitly in terms of either monomial or Chebyshev bases. By using these formulas, we can obtain the approximate particular solution when the right-hand side has been represented by a truncated series of Chebyshev polynomials. These formulas are further implemented to solve inhomogeneous partial differential equations (PDEs) in which the homogeneous solutions are complementarily solved by the method of fundamental solutions (MFS). Numerical experiments, which include More >