Presentation Abstracts

Expanded perlite is widely used in construction and manufacturing industry mainly due to its lightweight and its good thermal and acoustical insulating properties. Nevertheless, the currently applied expansion technology has some disadvantages, which affect the product quality and limit the range of its applications. To overcome these drawbacks a new expansion process has been designed based on the use of a vertical electrically heated expansion furnace. The knowledge and control of the conditions inside the furnace is very important to optimize the product properties and the furnace performance. The main parameters affecting expanded perlite properties are the expansion temperature and retention time. Both parameters can change through the proper adjustment of the furnace wall temperature and air feeding rate. The aim of this work is the application of a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach to study the temperature and air velocity profiles inside the furnace in order to understand and optimise the system thermal behaviour. In this frame the effect of the furnace operational parameters and especially the furnace wall temperature and the air flow rate have been analysed. Experimental measurements of the air temperature inside the electrical furnace have been carried out and are used to validate the computational results.

• About NTUA's Computer Center: history, facilities (hardware, software), tools, services.
• The CC's vision: Regardless of location, each and every NTUA member should have direct access to the cc's facilities and services.
• Implementing "Software as a Service" and "Infrastructure as a Service" facilities: the cc's approach to SAAS and IAAS.
• An outline of the architecture "inside the CC's Cloud".
• The "Central CloudFront" interface to the CC's Cloud.
• A quick overview of the supplied facilities.
• Doing Engineering Simulation using the CloudFront: A multitude of state of the art CAE programs are available to everybody.
• Running ANSYS examples.
• Benefits of running ANSYS on the Cloud.
• Things to improve
• Conclusion: This is a major challenge for software companies: Specialized software for engineers can be used in the undergraduate curriculum and prepare qualified engineers for real world problems.

This overview presentation outlines how Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) Technologies support the design process of innovative new products. As demands on manufacturing companies are mounting, margins for error are decreasing in globally ever more competitive markets. Building a virtual prototype on a computer and testing and fully understanding its behaviour before even touching real materials on the shop floor remove risk from the devopment process and help to get it right the first time.

to be supplied

In modern BioMechanics the finite element analysis of a Total Hip Arthroplasty is without doubt one of the most advanced study cases, since the hip - a major joints of the human body - is constantly under a highly complex loading combination. Focusing our interest mainly on the femoral components, current investigations aim to accurately model and analyze the mechanical effects of the implants on the bones involved.

In the current presentation it will be shown how ANSYS and ANSYS Workbench can be used in order to analyze the two main categories of THA: A monolithic stem and a modern modular implant. Loading scenarios, fixation issues, contact implementation and mesh generation are some of the design parameters under investigation.

The presentation will outline the advantages, benefits, and information gain of analysing turbmachinery rotors with multi-physics techniques. This introduction will be followed by a short description of the applied simulation technologies for fluid flow and mechanical analysis. The multi-physics coupling and data exchange algorithm will also be briefly introduced. The coupled fluid-structure analysis of the turbomachinery rotor is then subject to a "Robust Design Optimization (RDO)". The various steps of the RDO technique will then be explained, along with the insights that can be obtained from the various simulation steps. The presentation finishes with a cost vs. benefit analysis of the RDO technique.

A computational investigation was carried out in order to quantify the effects of thermal non-equilibrium two-phase flow on the flow characteristics of low-pressure steam turbines and the damage caused on blades due to erosion. These computations were performed using the ANSYS CFX code for the solution of the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations with an appropriate turbulence model based on finite volume discretization. Two different approaches were followed. In the first one, an Eulerian based droplet condensation model, based on the Classical Nucleation Theory, was implemented; and, in the second one, a Lagrangian particle tracking model was applied while water droplets were released in the flow. All simulations were performed for an existing operating turbine and conclusions were conducted for the influence of the liquid phase on efficiency of the machine, the thermodynamic effects of the two-phase flow and the erosion of blades.

In our study a sandwich beam under three point bending is considered .The core material of the beam contains an initially small crack oriented parallel to the longitudinal axis and very close to the upper skin interface. A code using commercial finite element software (ANSYS) has been developed in order to predict the position, the length of the crack and the place where kinking occurs inside the core of the sandwich beam. The code uses the energy criterion, and the code control points of decision concerning the propagation and the kinking of the crack are based on energy formulas from the fracture mechanics approach. A general flowchart of the proposed code (in APDL format) and results from the critical crack length- kinking into the core, are presented.

No amount of automation can compensate for a poor conceptual design. This presentation will demonstrate a practical set of computer aided tools that assist engineers in increasing their innovation skills. Several live demonstrations will be presented.