Date of Graduation

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Chemical Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Spicer, Tom

Abstract

A gas release computational fluid dynamics model was developed and validated using a previous wind tunnel experiment conducted by Daniel Williams. This simulation was modeled using CHEM software, and based on experimental conditions used in the University of Arkansas’ Chemical Hazard Research Center’s wind tunnel. These include ultra-low wind speeds, working in the atmospheric boundary layer, and using finite release durations with a neutrally buoyant gas. The simulation was developed in two phases: inflow and release. The inflow phase consisted of the development of the atmospheric boundary layer. The data from the simulation aligned well with the wind tunnel data. The release phase of the simulation consisted of the entirety of the tunnel and the gas release. The results from the simulation indicated a consistent leftward motion in all of the trials. Possible causes for this could be the small lateral range used for the simulation, periodic boundary conditions exacerbating meandering, and the small number of runs compared with previous data. Some future steps would be to continue to develop the release phase of the model further. Once developed, this model can be used to determine causes of cloud edge trends and predict experimental data before experiments are physically run. Additionally, because of how well the alignment was between the previous data and the simulation, the inflow phase can be used for other experiments with the same wind speed. However, it would also be worthwhile to compare Reynolds stress components for additional confirmation of dataset agreement.

Keywords

Computational Fluid Dynamics; Wind Tunnel; Data Validation

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