Power generation through heat to electrical energy conversion for space applications faces distinct challenges not encountered in terrestrial settings, where Rankine and Brayton cycles have traditionally been predominant. The unique environment of space necessitates the adoption of either static converters, leveraging solid-state physics, or closed-cycle dynamic converters. While thermoelectric generators have historically been the primary choice for heat-to-electrical energy conversion in space applications, their relatively low efficiencies and limited scope for enhancement pose significant challenges as the power demands of space missions increase. This necessitates the exploration of alternative power generation methodologies to meet the evolving requirements. This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of various power conversion technologies for space applications, focusing on the comparative study of static and dynamic converters, with a particular emphasis on Stirling converters. Other power systems discussed include thermoelectric, thermophotovoltaic, thermionic, and Brayton converters. Through comparative analysis, the research identifies the most promising converters for future space applications.

Theoretical analyses of liquid atomization (bulk to droplet conversion) and turbulence have potential to advance the computability of these flows. Instead of relying on full computations or models, fundamental conservation equations can be manipulated to generate partial or full solutions. For example, integral form of the mass and energy for spray flows leads to an explicit relationship between the drop size and liquid velocities. This is an ideal form to integrate with existing computational fluid dynamic (CFD), which is well developed to solve for the liquid velocities, i.e., the momentum equation(s). Theoretical adaption to CFD has been performed for various injection geometries, with results that compare quite well with experimental data. Since the drop size is provided analytically, computational time/cost for simulating spray flows with liquid atomization is no more than single-phase flows. Some advances have also been made on turbulent flows, by using a new set of perspectives on transport, scaling and energy distributions. Conservation equations for turbulence momentum and kinetic energy have been derived in a coordinate frame moving with the local mean velocities, which produce the Reynolds stress components, without modeling. Scaling of the Reynolds stress is also found at the first- and second-gradient levels. Finally, maximum-entropy principle has been used to derive the energy spectra in turbulent flows.

Computability of spray flows is an important issue, from both fundamental and practical perspectives. Spray flows have important applications in fuel injection, agriculture, medical devices, and industrial processes such as spray cooling. For this reason, many efforts have been devoted to experimental, computational and some theoretical aspects of spray flows. In particular, primary atomization, the process of bulk liquid transitioning to small droplets, is a central and probably the most difficult aspect of spray flows. This thesis discusses developed methods, results, and needed improvements in the modeling of primary atomization using a predictive Sauter Mean Diameter (SMD) formula. Primary atomization for round injectors and simplex atomizers is modeled using a three-step procedure. For each spray geometry, a volume-of-fluid simulation is run to resolve the trajectory of the intact liquid core. Atomization criterion is applied to the volume-of-fluid velocity field to determine atomization sites. Local droplet size is predicted at the atomization sites using the quadratic formula for Sauter Mean Diameter. Droplets with the computed drop size are injected from the atomization sites and are tracked as point-particles. A User Defined Memory (UDM) code is employed to compute steady-state Sauter Mean Diameter statistics at locations corresponding to experimental interrogation locations. The resulting Sauter Mean Diameter, droplet trajectory, and droplet velocity are compared against experimental data to validate the computational protocol. This protocol can be implemented on coarse-grid, time-averaged simulations of spray flows, and produces convincing results when compared with experimental data for pressure-atomized sprays with and without swirl. This approach is general and can be adapted in any spray geometry for complete and efficient computations of spray flows.

Water is one of, if not the most valuable natural resource but extremely challenging to manage. According to old research in the field, many Water Distribution Systems (WDSs) around the world lose above 40 percent of clean water pumped into the distribution system because of unfortune leaks before the water gets anywhere from the fresh water resources. By reducing the amount of water leaked, distribution system managers can reduce the amount of money, resources, and energy wasted on finding and repairing the leaks, and then producing and pumping water, increase system reliability and more easily satisfy present and future needs of all consumers. But having access to this information pre-amatively and sufficiently can be complex and time taking. For large companies like SRP who are moving tonnes of water from various water bodies around phoenix area, it is even more crucial to efficiently locate and characterize the leaks. And phoenix being a busy city, it is not easy to go start digging everywhere, whenever a loss in pressure is reported at the destination.

Keeping this in mind, non-invasive methods to geo-physically work on it needs attention. There is a lot of potential in this field of work to even help with environmental crisis as this helps in places where water theft is big and is conducted through leaks in the distribution system. Methods like Acoustic sensing and ground penetrating radars have shown good results, and the work done in this thesis helps us realise the limitations and extents to which they can be used in the phoenix are.

The concrete pipes used by SRP are would not be able to generate enough acoustic signals to be affectively picked up by a hydrophone at the opening, so the GPR would be helpful in finding the initial location of the leak, as the water around the leak would make the sand wet and hence show a clear difference on the GPR. After that the frequency spectrum can be checked around that point which would show difference from another where we know a leak is not present.

Liquid injection in cross flows has applications in gas-turbine engines, afterburners and some rocket combustion chambers. Integral form of the conservation equations has been used to find a cubic formula for the drop size in liquid sprays in cross flows. Similar to the work on axial liquid sprays, the energy balance dictates that the initial kinetic energy of the gas and injected liquid be distributed into the final surface tension energy, kinetic energy of the gas and droplets, and viscous dissipation incurred. Kinetic energy of the cross flow is added to the energy balance. Then, only the viscous dissipation term needs to be phenomenologically modelled. The mass and energy balance for the spray flows renders to an expression that relates the drop size to all of the relevant parameters, including the gas- and liquid-phase velocities. The results agree well with experimental data and correlations for the drop size. The solution also provides for drop size-velocity cross-correlation, leading to drop size distributions based on the gas-phase velocity distribution. These aspects can be used in estimating the drop size for practical applications, and also in computational simulations of liquid injection in cross flows, and in other spray geometries in general.

Membrane filtration is an important technology in industry. In the past few decades, equations have been developed from experimental results to predict cake formation and permeate flux decline in the membrane filtration process. In the current work, the block of particles on membrane surface is achieved by setting surface flux on membrane surface zero. This approach is implemented for both microfiltration and nanofiltration using OpenFOAM. Moreover, a new method to deal with cake resistance for nanofiltration is introduced. Cake resistance is applied to both cake and membrane. To validate the new techniques, results of crossflow microfiltration are compared to theoretical results and results of two crossflow nanofiltration cases are compared to experimental data. In addition, the new techniques are applied to dead end filtration to observe the different structure of the cake and explore the effect of resistance on velocity profile.

The purpose of my Honors Thesis was to generate a tool that could be implemented by Aerospace students at Arizona State University. This tool was created using MatLab which is the current program students are using. The modeling system that was generated goes step-by-step through the flow of a two spool gas turbine engine. The code was then compared to an ideal case engine with predictable values. It was found to have less than a 3 percent error for these parameters, which included optimal net work produced, optimal overall pressure ratio, and maximum pressure ratio. The modeling system was then run through a parametric analysis. In the first case, the bypass ratio was set to 0 and the freestream Mach number was set to 0. The second case was with a bypass ratio of 0 and fresstream Mach number of 0.85. The third case was with a bypass ratio of 5 and freestream Mach number of 0. The fourth case was with a bypass ratio of 5 and fresstream Mach number of 0.85. Each of these cases was run at various overall pressure ratios and maximum Temperatures of 1500 K, 1600 K and 1700 K. The results modeled the behavior that was expected. As the freestream Mach number was increased, the thrust decreased and the thrust specific fuel consumption increased, corresponding to an increase in total pressure at the combustor inlet. It was also found that the thrust was increased and the thrust specific fuel consumption decreased as the bypass ratio was increased. These results also make sense as there is less airflow passing through the engine core. Finally the engine was compared to two real engines. Both of which are General Electric G6 series engines. For the 80C2A3 engine, the percent difference between thrust and thrust specific fuel consumption was less than five percent. For the 50B, the thrust was below a two percent difference, but the thrust specific fuel consumption clearly provided inaccurate results. This could be caused by the lack of inputs provided by General Electric. The amount of fuel injected is largely dependent on the maximum temperature which is not available to the public. Overall, the code produces comparable results to real engines and can display how isolating and modifying a certain parameter effects engine performance.

The subject of this thesis is concerned with the amount of cooling air assigned to seal high pressure turbine rim cavities which is critical for performance as well as component life. Insufficient air leads to excessive hot annulus gas ingestion and its penetration deep into the cavity compromising disc life. Excessive purge air, adversely affects performance. Experiments on a rotating turbine stage rig which included a rotor-stator forward disc cavity were performed at Arizona State University. The turbine rig has 22 vanes and 28 blades, while the rim cavity is composed of a single-tooth rim lab seal and a rim platform overlap seal. Time-averaged static pressures were measured in the gas path and the cavity, while mainstream gas ingestion into the cavity was determined by measuring the concentration distribution of tracer gas (carbon dioxide). Additionally, particle image velocimetry (PIV) was used to measure fluid velocity inside the rim cavity between the lab seal and the overlap. The data from the experiments were compared to an 360-degree unsteady RANS (URANS) CFD simulations. Although not able to match the time-averaged test data satisfactorily, the CFD simulations brought to light the unsteadiness present in the flow during the experiment which the slower response data did not fully capture. To interrogate the validity of URANS simulations in capturing complex rotating flow physics, the scope of this work also included to validating the CFD tool by comparing its predictions against experimental LDV data in a closed rotor-stator cavity. The enclosed cavity has a stationary shroud, a rotating hub, and mass flow does not enter or exit the system. A full 360 degree numerical simulation was performed comparing Fluent LES, with URANS turbulence models. Results from these investigations point to URANS state of art under-predicting closed cavity tangential velocity by 32% to 43%, and open rim cavity effectiveness by 50% compared to test data. The goal of this thesis is to assess the validity of URANS turbulence models in more complex rotating flows, compare accuracy with LES simulations, suggest CFD settings to better simulate turbine stage mainstream/disc cavity interaction with ingestion, and recommend experimentation techniques.

The study of deflagration to detonation transition (DDT) in explosives is of prime importance with regards to insensitive munitions (IM). Critical damage owing to thermal or shock stimuli could translate to significant loss of life and material. The present study models detonation and deflagration of a commonly used granular explosive: cyclotetramethylene-tetranitramine, HMX. A robust literature review is followed by computational modeling of gas gun and DDT tube test data using the Sandia National Lab three-dimensional multi-material Eulerian hydrocode CTH. This dissertation proposes new computational practices and models that aid in predicting shock stimulus IM response. CTH was first used to model experimental data sets of DDT tubes from both Naval Surface Weapons Center and Los Alamos National Laboratory which were initiated by pyrogenic material and a piston, respectively. Analytical verification was performed, where possible, for detonation via empirical based equations at the Chapman Jouguet state with errors below 2.1%, and deflagration via pressure dependent burn rate equations. CTH simulations include inert, history variable reactive burn and Arrhenius models. The results are in excellent agreement with published HMX detonation velocities. Novel additions include accurate simulation of the pyrogenic material BKNO3 and the inclusion of porosity in energetic materials. The treatment of compaction is especially important in modeling precursory hotspots, caused by hydrodynamic collapse of void regions or grain interactions, prior to DDT of granular explosives. The CTH compaction model of HMX was verified within 11% error via a five pronged validation approach using gas gun data and employed use of a newly generated set of P-α parameters for granular HMX in a Mie-Gruneisen Equation of State. Next, the additions of compaction were extended to a volumetric surface burning model of HMX and compare well to a set of empirical burn rates. Lastly, the compendium of detonation and deflagration models was applied to the aforementioned DDT tubes and demonstrate working functionalities of all models, albeit at the expense of significant computational resources. A robust hydrocode methodology is proposed to make use of the deflagration, compaction and detonation models as a means to predict IM response to shock stimulus of granular explosive materials.

First, in a large-scale structure, a 3-D CFD model was built to simulate flow and temperature distributions. The flow patterns and temperature distributions are characterized and validated through spot measurements. The detailed understanding of them then allows for optimization of the HVAC configuration because identification of the problematic flow patterns and temperature mis-distributions leads to some corrective measures. Second, an appropriate form of the viscous dissipation term in the integral form of the conservation equation was considered, and the effects of momentum terms on the computed drop size in pressure-atomized sprays were examined. The Sauter mean diameter (SMD) calculated in this manner agrees well with experimental data of the drop velocities and sizes. Using the suggested equation with the revised treatment of liquid momentum setup, injection parameters can be directly input to the system of equations. Thus, this approach is capable of incorporating the effects of injection parameters for further considerations of the drop and velocity distributions under a wide range of spray geometry and injection conditions. Lastly, groundwater level estimation was investigated using compressed sensing (CS). To satisfy a general property of CS, a random measurement matrix was used, the groundwater network was constructed, and finally the l-1 optimization was run. Through several validation tests, correct estimation of groundwater level by CS was shown. Using this setup, decreasing trends in groundwater level in the southwestern US was shown. The suggested method is effective in that the total measurements of registered wells can be reduced down by approximately 42 %, sparse data can be visualized and a possible approach for groundwater management during extreme weather changes, e.g. in California, was demonstrated.