In the present study, the effective parameters of water-Al2O3 nanofluid flowing in flat tubes are investigated using the EFAST Sensitivity Analysis (SA) method. The SA is performed using GMDH type artificial neural networks (ANN) which are based on validated numerical data of two phase modeling of nanofluid flow in flat tubes. There are five design variables namely: tube flattening (H), flow ra...

Flow visualization with high-speed video of evaporating water films falling over flat horizontal tubes, representative of the external surfaces of microchannel tubes, is presented. Experiments were conducted with 1.4 mm thick and 27 mm tall tubes over a film Reynolds number range of 23 < Re < 126. In addition to a qualitative description of the flow mechanisms, this work quantifies key droplet ...

Reducing mixing in both flat panel and tubular photobioreactors can result in a positive net energy balance with state-of-the-art technology and Dutch weather conditions. In the tubular photobioreactor, the net energy balance becomes positive at velocities < 0.3 ms-1, at which point the biomass production cost is 3.2 €/kg dry weight. In flat panel reactors, this point is at an air supply rate <...

Recently researchers have developed soft actuators capable of morphing into complex shapes taking inspiration from nature. In this paper, we a splay-nematic liquid crystal polymer network tapered actuator that can morph flat film to cone, mimicking the blooming single petal Calla Lily flower. We demonstrated formation conical tubes through finite element simulations and experiments. The influen...

Conventional endotracheal tubes have high intrinsic resistive properties due to their high outer-to-inner diameter ratio. This has significant disadvantages in the treatment of the small neonatal or pediatric patient as work of breathing increases with decreasing internal radius. Diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, including suctioning, may be very difficult in patients with small endotrache...

Thin sheets can be assembled into origami tubes to create a variety of deployable, reconfigurable and mechanistically unique three-dimensional structures. We introduce and explore origami tubes with polygonal, translational symmetric cross-sections that can reconfigure into numerous geometries. The tubular structures satisfy the mathematical definitions for flat and rigid foldability, meaning t...