Section: Contracts and Grants with Industry

Optimal (Aerospace Valley)

Participants : Roland Becker, Kossivi Gokpy, Robert Luce, Eric Schall, David Trujillo.

Optimal is a research project related to the cooling of the stator of a turbomachinery. Both physical experiments and numerical simulations are employed. This project has three industrial (Liebherr, Epsilon, and SIBI) and three academic partners (Universities of Pau, Poitiers, and Toulouse). It has been evaluated by the cluster Aerospace Valley. The PhD-thesis of Kossivi Gokpy is financed by this project.

Figure 21. Temperature field and recirculation for two geometries and computed Nusselt numbers for different inflow velocities.

Our contributions concern the numerical simulation of the viscous flow in different geometrical configurations. Comparison with experimental data will be investigated with respect to the Nusselt number. The computed temperature and streamlines for typical geometries are shown in Figure 21 . In addition, the computed Nusselt numbers for the two configurations and varying inflow velocities are given.

Among the different questions concerning modeling such as the boundary conditions at the in- and outlets and the sensitivity to the geometry, a particular point of interest is the study of compressibility effects.

The experimental part of the product is conducted in collaboration with Mathieu Mory, professor at UPPA, and the post-doctoral position of Stéphane Soubacq, who started to work in 10/2009, is financed by the project. The modeling and numerical simulation is done in collaboration with Abdellah Saboni, professor at UPPA.