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Experimental data are presented for local heat transfer rates in the tube downstream of an abrupt 2:1 expansion. Water, with a nominal inlet Prandtl number of 6, was used as the working fluid. In the upstream tube, the Reynolds number was varied from 30,000 to 100,000 and the swirl number was varied from zero to 1.2. A uniform wall heat flux boundary condition was employed, which resulted in wall-to-bulk fluid temperatures ranging from 14° C to 50°C. Plots of local Nusselt numbers show a sharply peaked behavior at the point of maximum heat transfer, with increasing swirl greatly exaggerating the peaking. As swirl incressed from zero to its maximum value, the location of peak Nusselt numbers was observed to shift from 8.0 to 1.5 step heights downstream of the expansion. This upstream movement of the maximum Nusselt number was accompanied by an increase in its magnitude from 3 to 9.5 times larger than fully developed tube flow values. For all cases, the location of maximum heat transfer occurred upstream of the flow reattachment point.

An alternative configuration for a regenerative gas turbine engine cycle is presented that yields higher cycle efficiencies than either simple or conventional regenerative cycles operating under the same conditions. The essence of the scheme is to preheat compressor discharge air with high temperature combustion gases before the latter are fully expanded across the turbine. The efficiency is improved because air enters the combustor at a higher temperature, and hence heat addition in the combustor occurs at a higher average temperature. The heat exchanger operating conditions are more demanding than for a conventional regeneration configuration, but well within the capability of modern heat exchangers. Models of cycle performance exhibit several percentage points of improvement relative to either simple cycles or conventional regeneration schemes. The peak efficiencies of the alternative regeneration configuration occur at optimum pressure ratios that are significantly lower than those required for the simple cycle. For example, at a turbine inlet temperature of 1300°C (2370°F), the alternative regeneration scheme results in cycle efficiencies of 50% for overall pressure ratios of 22, whereas simple cycles operating at the same temperature would yield efficiencies of only 43.8% at optimum pressure ratios of 50, which are not feasible with current compressor designs. Model calculations for a wide range of parameters are presented, as are comparisons with simple and conventional regeneration cycles.

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In video-based particle-image velocimetry (PIV) systems for fluid mechanics research, it is sometimes desirable to image seed particles to be smaller than a camera pixel. However, imaging to this size can lead to marginal image contrast such that significant numbers of erroneous velocity vectors can be computed, even for simple flow fields. A variety of image-enhancement techniques suitable for a low-cost PIV system that uses video cameras are examined and tested on three representative flows. Techniques such as linear contrast enhancement and histogram hyperbolization are shown to have good potential for improving the image contrast and hence the accuracy of the data-reduction process with only a 15% increase in the computational time. Some other schemes that were examined appear to be of little practical value in PIV applications. An automated shifting algorithm based on mass conservation is shown to be useful for displacing the second interrogation region in the direction of flow, which minimizes the number of uncorrelated particle images that contribute noise to the data-reduction process.

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