Numerical studies on issues of Re-independence for indoor airflow and pollutant dispersion within an isolated building.

This study conducted the numerical models validated by wind-tunnel experiments to investigate the issues of Re-independence of indoor airflow and pollutant dispersion within an isolated building. The window Reynolds number (Re w ) was specified to characterize the indoor flow and dispersion. The indicators of RRC (ratio of relative change) or DR (K_DR) (difference ratio of dimensionless concentration) ≤ 5% were applied to quantitatively determine the critical Re w for indoor flow and turbulent diffusion. The results show that the critical Re (Re crit) value is position-dependent, and Re crit at the most unfavorable position should be suggested as the optimal value within the whole areas of interest. Thus Re H,crit = 27,000 is recommended for the outdoor flows; while Re w,crit = 15,000 is determined for the indoor flows due to the lower part below the window showing the most unfavorable. The suggested Re w,crit (=15,000) for indoor airflow and cross ventilation is independence of the window size. Moreover, taking K_DR ≤ 5% as the indicator, the suggested Re w,crit for ensuring indoor pollutant diffusion enter the Re-independence regime should also be 15,000, indicating that indoor passive diffusion is completely determined by the flow structures. The contours of dimensionless velocity (U/U 0) and concentration (K) against the increasing Re w further confirmed this critical value. This study further reveals the Re-independence issues for indoor flow and dispersion to ensure the reliability of the data obtained by reduced-scale numerical or wind-tunnel models.

Harnessing uniaxial tension to tune Poisson's ratio and wave propagation in soft porous phononic crystals: an experimental study.

Exerting mechanical loads on soft periodic porous phononic crystals provides a unique opportunity to control the propagation of waves through the peculiar band gaps. However, it is quite difficult to experimentally confirm the band gaps in soft materials owing to their viscosity and instability-prone character. We investigate here via experiments the effect of regulation of uniaxial tension on the band gaps in a 2D soft phononic crystal with criss-crossed elliptical holes which was designed based on the contrarian thinking to our previous study. The results show that the soft phononic crystal has rich initial band gaps and can be tuned by harnessing uniaxial tension to achieve continuous control of elastic band gaps. Moreover, the effect of the uniaxial tension on the effective Poisson's ratio of the structure is also studied. The present study confirms the feasibility of the design of soft tunable phononic crystals and acoustic devices by harnessing uniaxial tension.

Time-dependent response of laminated isotropic strips with viscoelastic interfaces.

The two dimensional problem of simply supported laminated isotropic strips with viscoelastic interfaces and under static loading was studied. Exact solution was derived based on the exact elasticity equation and the Kevin-Voigt viscoelastic interfacial model. Numerical computations were performed for a strip consisting of three layers of equal thickness. Results indicated that the response of the laminate was very sensitive to the presence of viscoelastic interfaces.

Potential theory method for 3D crack and contact problems of multi-field coupled media: a survey.

This paper presents an overview of the recent progress of potential theory method in the analysis of mixed boundary value problems mainly stemming from three-dimensional crack or contact problems of multi-field coupled media. This method was used to derive a series of exact three dimensional solutions which should be of great theoretical significance because most of them usually cannot be derived by other methods such as the transform method and the trial-and-error method. Further, many solutions are obtained in terms of elementary functions that enable us to treat more complicated problems easily. It is pointed out here that the method is usually only applicable to media characterizing transverse isotropy, from which, however, the results for the isotropic case can be readily obtained.

Three-dimensional analysis of a thick FGM rectangular plate in thermal environment.

The thermal behavior of a thick transversely isotropic FGM rectangular plate was investigated within the scope of three-dimensional elasticity. Noticing many FGMs may have temperature-dependent properties, the material constants were further considered as functions of temperature. A solution method based on state-space formulations with a laminate approximate model was proposed. For a thin plate, the method was clarified by comparison with the thin plate theory. The influences of material inhomogeneity and temperature-dependent characteristics were finally discussed through numerical examples.

Theoretical solution of a spherically isotropic hollow sphere for dynamic thermoelastic problems.

The separation of variables method was successfully used to resolve the spherically symmetric dynamic thermoelastic problem for a spherically isotropic elastic hollow sphere. Use of the integral transform can be avoided by means of this method, which is also appropriate for an arbitrary thickness hollow sphere subjected to arbitrary thermal and mechanical loads. Numerical results are presented to show the dynamic stress responses in the uniformly heated hollow spheres.