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AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
InventorsAlok Kumar Majumdar, John W. Bailey, Paul Alan Schallhorn, Todd E. Steadman
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A general purpose program implemented on a computer analyzes steady state and transient flow in a complex fluid network, modeling phase changes, compressibility, mixture thermodynamics and external body forces such as gravity and centrifugal force. A preprocessor provides for the interactive development of a fluid network simulation having nodes and branches. Mass, energy, and specie conservation equations are solved at the nodes, and momentum conservation equations are solved in the branches. Contained herein are subroutines for computing “real fluid” thermodynamic and thermophysical properties for 12 fluids, and a number of different source options are provided for modeling momentum sources or sinks in the branches. The system of equations describing the fluid network is solved by a hybrid numerical method that is a combination of the Newton-Raphson and successive substitution methods. Application and verification of this invention are provided through an example problem, which demonstrates that the predictions of the present invention compare most reasonably with test data.
A process for analyzing steady state and transient flow in a complex fluid network to provide modeling of phase changes, compressibility, mixture thermodynamics, and external body forces, which process comprises the following cooperative combination of procedural steps and major structural elements implemented on a computer:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.