The production of thermal energy from solar energy by flat collectors finds nowadays many applications due to their innumerable economic and environmental interests. Currently, conservation of energy resources has become a global priority. On the other hand, given the dizzying demand for energy, has led specialists to find new techniques, such as renewable energies (solar, wind and geothermal). The present work is a contribution, by numerical simulation, to the study of heat transfer in flat solar collectors. On the basis of some experimental data, several simulation calculations have been carried out in order to determine the influencing parameters allowing better performance of the sensors and ensuring a good homogeneity of the temperature distributions. Based on the observation that, due to the low thermophysical properties of the air used as heat transfer fluid, solar air collectors rather give poor yields. It has been found very useful to have ‘baffling’ obstacles of various shapes and forms in the solar collector duct. This increases the thermal transfer of a coolant, which clearly improves the thermal efficiency of the solar air collector. This article consists mainly of studying the effects on heat transfer of turbulent forced convection by baffles of zigzag shapes, placed in a rectangular channel, using the finite volume method. The pressure-velocity coupling has been processed by the SIMPLEC algorithm. The results are presented in terms of the average Nusselt number and temperature field for different positions.

Most of the formulations regarding the characteristics of a shell and tube heat exchanger have a common assumption; namely that the baffle plates are equidistant. This assumption fails to cater the real world scenario for defective baffles as the alteration in a shell and tube heat exchanger invalidates the equidistant baffle spacing of the plates. In this regard, a small six baffles heat exchanger was modeled in the computational fluid dynamics software package and studied by removing each baffle plate one at a time. Effect of removing each baffle plate on the temperature, pressure, heat transfer coefficient, and total heat transfer rate was recorded. It was observed that variation in the pressure drop for the same number of baffle plates varies along the axial order of the plates. The change in pressure drop due to the removal of the baffle plate near the inlet and the outlet was lowest and reaches a maximum in the axial center. It was also found that the plates below the radial center contribute higher towards the overall heat transfer as compared to those above.

This work is an attempt to study the behaviour of fluid in the mixing vessel with a two-bladed or four-bladed impeller. The working fluid is complex, of a shear-thinning type and the Oswald model is used to describe the fluid viscosity. The study was accomplishedby numerically solving the governing equations of momentum and continuity. These equations were solved for the following range of conditions: 50–1000 for the Reynolds number, 0–0.15 for the baffle length ratio, and the number of impeller blades 2 and 4. The simulations were done for the steady state and laminar regime. The results show that the increase in baffle length (by increasing the ratio baffle length ratio) decreases the fluid velocity in the vessel. Increasing the speed of rotation of the impeller and/or increasing the number of blades improves the mixing process. Also, the length of the baffles does not affect the consumed power.

The airflow through a two-dimensional horizontal rectangular cross-section channel in the presence of two baffles has been numerically examined and analyzed in the steady turbulent regime. The baffles were of the zig-zag type or plane one. The calculations are based on the finite volume approach and the average Navier–Stokes equations along with the energy equation, have been solved using the SIMPLE algorithm. The nonuniform structured quadrilateral-type element mesh is used in this study. The fluid flow patterns represented for Reynolds numbers based on the hydraulic diameter of the channel ranging from 5000 to 20 000. Effects of various Reynolds number values on flow fields, dimensionless axial velocity profiles, as well as local and average friction coefficients in the test channel is presented. The obtained results show that the flow structure is characterized by strong deformations and large recirculation regions. In general, the fluid velocity and skin friction loss rise with the increase in the flow rate and hence the Reynolds number.

Analytical relations, describing the electrical fields of cylindrical piezoceramic radiators with circular polarization as a member of the cylindrical systems with the baffle in the inner cavity, using the related fields method in multiply connected regions were obtained. Comparative analysis of the results of numerical experiments performed on the frequency characteristics of the electric field of the radiating systems for different modes of radiation allow to establish a number of subtle effects of the formation of the electric field of radiators.

The evaluation of complex radiation impedance for a square piston source on an infinite circularcylindrical baffle is associated to the Greenspon-Sherman formulation for which novel evaluation methods are proposed. Unlike existing methods results are produced in a very wide range of frequencies and source semi-angles with controllable precision. For this reason closed-form expressions are used to describe the truncation errors of all integrals and infinite sums involved. Impedance values of increased accuracy are also provided in tabulated form for engineering use and a new radiation mass-load model is derived for low-frequencies.

The overall efficiency of battery energy storage systems (BESSs) strongly depends on the temperature uniformity of the batteries, usually disregarded in studies of the integrated performance of BESSs. This paper presents a new battery thermal management system (BTMS) using a personalized air supply instead of a central air supply. Thermal models are established to predict the thermal behavior of BESSs with 400 battery packs. Moreover, several optimizations comprising the effect of the position and number of air inlets, the number, and angle of the baffles on the air distribution in the ducts are proposed. The results show that the distributed air supply from the main air inlet makes the air velocity in the main air ducts more uniform. It is demonstrated that air deflection is the main source of airflow inhomogeneity at the air outlets. The airflow uniformity is better when the baffles are added at the entrance and the bottom of each riser duct than at other locations. The improved air supply scheme makes the nonuniformity coefficient of air velocity reduced from 1.358 to 0.257. The findings can guide the selection of a cooling form to enhance the safety of BESSs.

The composite weir-gate structure is considered an important hydraulic structure. This is because of its widely used in civil engineering hydraulic works especially in an irrigation system to measure, control, divert and keep the required water level. This study focuses on the influence of barrier existence on the hydraulic parameters that described the hydraulic characteristics of composite weir-gate hydraulic structure. In this study, several experimental runs were conducted to determine the effect of barrier's location, spacing and number on the water level and depth at the downstream region of flume, discharge coefficient of composite hydraulic structure, and flow rate throughout the flume. Our experiments indicated that the turbulence intensity, inlet effect, and position, gap, and number of barriers have affected the hydraulic behavior of weir-gate structure. This appears clearly by obtaining different results of discharge coefficient and flow rate that cross the weir-gate structure comparing with same cases without barriers. Also this study gives some insights on the significance roles of fluid separation, eddies generation near the barrier, fluid resistance and overlap between overflow and underflow velocities and their effects on hydraulic factors that dominate the problem. These hydraulic factors must be considered in the design and construction of barrier/barriers in open channel to prevent any fluctuation or drop in discharge, water elevation and the required water depth at downstream region.

The axisymmetric problem of acoustic impedance of a vibrating annular piston embedded into a flat rigid baffle concentrically around a semi-infinite rigid cylindrical circular baffle has been undertaken in this study. The Helmholtz equation has been solved. The Green’s function valid for the zone considered has been used for this purpose. The influence of the semi-infinite cylindrical baffle on the piston’s acoustic impedance has been investigated. The acoustic impedance has been presented in both forms: integral and asymptotic, both valid for the steady harmonic vibrations. Additionally, the acoustic impedances of the piston with and without the cylindrical baffle have been compared to one another. In the case without the cylindrical baffle some earlier results have been used

Most researchers have explored noise reduction effects based on the transfer matrix method and the boundary element method. However, maximum noise reduction of a plenum within a constrained space, which frequently occurs in engineering problems, has been neglected. Therefore, the optimum design of multi-chamber plenums becomes essential. In this paper, two kinds of multi-chamber plenums (Case I: a two-chamber plenum that is partitioned with a centre-opening baffle; Case II: a three-chamber plenum that is partitioned with two centre-opening baffles) within a fixed space are assessed. In order to speed up the assessment of optimal plenums hybridized with multiple partitioned baffles, a simplified objective function (OBJ) is established by linking the boundary element model (BEM, developed using SYSNOISE) with a polynomial neural network fit with a series of real data – input design data (baffle dimensions) and output data approximated by BEM data in advance. To assess optimal plenums, a genetic algorithm (GA) is applied. The results reveal that the maximum value of the transmission loss (TL) can be improved at the desired frequencies. Consequently, the algorithm proposed in this study can provide an efficient way to develop optimal multi-chamber plenums for industry.

The profile of microbial diversity in a NABR digesting RPMW was investigated using phylogeneticanalysis of partial 16S rRNA sequences by a neighbor-joining-tree, supported by microbial morphology analysis by SEM. The results showed that microorganism inside NABR consisted of dominant Bacillus (25 strains) and Bacterium (1 strain) which were isolated from the settled sludge at the bottom of the reactor, whilst Bacillus (2 strains), Pseudomonas (2 strain) and Chryseobacterium (2 strain) were isolated from the biofilm formed on the packing material. It revealed that the microbial community strains, function, and structure changed simultaneously throughout the reactor system. The microscopic results showed rich biofacies, while the dominant microorganisms have various morphologies in every compartment of the system. It consisted of a long rod-shaped and filamentous bacterium composed majorly of bacilli of different sizes. Although the study successfully analyzed the microbial diversity and morphology in the system, the microbial communities reported in this study were different from other similar studies. This may be caused by the application of a culture-based technique that usually provides limited information due to the number of barely cultivated or uncultured strains

Sedimentation tanks have a vital role in the overall efficiency of solid particles removal in treatment units. Therefore, an in-depth study these tanks is necessary to ensure high quality of water and increasing the system efficiency. In this work, an experimental rectangular sedimentation tank has been operated with and without a baffle to investigate the system behaviour and effectiveness for the reduction of solid particles. Turbid water was prepared using clay, which was collected from the water treatment plant of Al Maqal Port (Iraq), mixed with clear water in a plastic supply tank. Raw and outflow samples were tested against turbidity after plotting a calibration curve between inflow suspended solids versus their corresponding turbidity values. The key objective was to assess the impact of different flow rates, particle concentrations, heights and positions of the baffle on the system efficiency. Findings showed that the tank performance was enhanced significantly (p < 0.05) with the use of a baffle placed at a distance of 0.15 of tank length with height equal to 0.2 of tank depth. Higher removal efficiency (91%) was recorded at a lower flow rate (0.015 dm3∙s–1) and higher concentration (1250 mg∙dm–3), as the treatment efficiency enhanced by 34% compared with the operation without a baffle. Placing the baffle in the middle of the sedimentation tank produced the worst results. System efficiency for solids removal reduced with increasing baffle height. Further research is required to evaluate the efficiency of an inclined baffle.