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The paper describes an analytical study of hydrodynamic processes taking place in the course of coolant flow through a fuel assembly of the core of a fast neutron sodium-cooled reactor. Within the framework of the study, a procedure and an analytical model were developed based on program complex FlowVision of computational fluid dynamics, which, using proved simplifications, permits to obtain a coefficient of rod lifting margin of a fuel assembly and to study hydrodynamic characteristics of processes taking place in the course of simulation of different initial events influencing motion of a reactor core fuel assembly.

For analytical justification a fuel assembly model was developed, which is equivalent by hydraulic resistance values and permits not to simulate explicitly a complicated full-scale fuel assembly design, thus, decreasing a number of computational cells in the model and, as a result, reducing computational and time resources.

Hydraulic parameters of the equivalent fuel assembly model in program complex FlowVision were analyzed in two stages. At the first stage, to determine the minimum rod lifting margin coefficient of a fuel assembly, steady-state analyses were performed, where various flowrate values were assigned at the model inlet and forces acting upon the assembly were analyzed. A series of dynamic mode analyses was performed at the second stage. Jump-like pressure increase being the initial event which could occur hypothetically in the fast neutron sodium cooled reactor plant was assigned in these modes. Hydrodynamic parameters and forces acting upon the fuel assembly were determined.

The results of the first stage of the analytical study proved the minimum coefficient of rod lifting margin of a fuel assembly of the fast neutron reactor justified in reactor plant design documentation. As a result of the second stage of the study, conclusions were made on impossibility for the fuel assembly to move at the initial event associated with jump-like pressure increase in the reactor pressure chamber.

The work is devoted to the development of a computational algorithm of the Cartesian grid method for studying the interaction of a shock wave with moving bodies with a piecewise linear boundary. The interest in such problems is connected with direct numerical simulation of two-phase media flows. The effect of the particle shape can be important in the problem of dust layer dispersion behind a passing shock wave. Experimental data on the coefficient of aerodynamic drag of non-spherical particles are practically absent.

Mathematical model is based on the two-dimensional Euler equations, which are solved in a region with varying boundaries. The defining system of equations is integrated using an explicit scheme and the Cartesian grid method. The computational algorithm at the time integration step includes: determining the step value, calculating the dynamics of the body movement (determining the force and moment acting on the body; determining the linear and angular velocities of the body; calculating the new coordinates of the body), calculating the gas parameters. At each time step, all cells are divided into two classes – external (inside the body or intersected by its boundaries) and internal (completely filled with gas). The solution of the Euler equations is constructed only in the internal ones. The main difficulty is the calculation of the numerical flux through the edges common to the internal and external cells intersected by the moving boundaries of the bodies. To calculate this flux, we use a two-wave approximation for solving the Riemann problem and the Steger-Warming scheme. A detailed description of the numerical algorithm is presented.

The efficiency of the algorithm is demonstrated on the problem of lifting a cylinder with a base in the form of a circle, ellipse and rectangle behind a passing shock wave. A circular cylinder test was considered in many papers devoted to the immersed boundary methods development. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the trajectory of the cylinder center mass is carried out on the basis of comparison with the results of simulations presented in eight other works. For a cylinder with a base in the form of an ellipse and a rectangle, a satisfactory agreement was obtained on the dynamics of its movement and rotation in comparison with the available few literary sources. Grid convergence of the results is investigated for the rectangle. It is shown that the relative error of mass conservation law fulfillment decreases with a linear rate.

The main feature of a two-dimensional turbulent flow, constantly excited by an external force, is the appearance of an inverse energy cascade. Due to nonlinear effects, the spatial scale of the vortices created by the external force increases until the growth is stopped by the size of the cell. In the latter case, energy is accumulated at these dimensions. Under certain conditions, accumulation leads to the appearance of a system of coherent vortices. The observed vortices are of the order of the box size and, on average, are isotropic. Numerical simulation is an effective way to study such the processes. Of particular interest is the problem of studying the viscous fluid turbulence in a square cell under excitation by short-wave and long-wave static external forces. Numerical modeling was carried out with a weakly compressible fluid in a two-dimensional square cell with zero boundary conditions. The work shows how the flow characteristics are influenced by the spatial frequency of the external force and the magnitude of the viscosity of the fluid itself. An increase in the spatial frequency of the external force leads to stabilization and laminarization of the flow. At the same time, with an increased spatial frequency of the external force, a decrease in viscosity leads to the resumption of the mechanism of energy transfer along the inverse cascade due to a shift in the energy dissipation region to a region of smaller scales compared to the pump scale.

In the paper the statistical relationships between the size and production characteristics of phytoplankton and zooplankton of the Vistula and Curonian lagoons, the Baltic Sea, were investigated. Research phytoplankton and zooplankton within the Russian part of the area of the Vistula and the Curonian lagoon was carried out on the monthly basis (from April to November) within the framework of long-term monitoring program on evaluating of ecological status of the lagoons. The size structure of plankton is the basis for understanding of the development of production processes, mechanisms of formation of the plankton species diversity and functioning of the lagoon ecosystems. As results of the work it was found that the maximum rate of photosynthesis and the integral value of the primary production with a change in cell volume of phytoplankton are changed according to a power law. The result shows that the smaller the size of algal cells in phytoplankton communities the more actively occur metabolism and the more effective they assimilate the solar energy. It is shown that the formation of plankton species diversity in ecosystems of lagoons is closely linked with the size structure of plankton communities and with features of development of the production processes. It is proposed the structure of a spatially homogenous mathematical model of the plankton food chain for the lagoon ecosystems taking into account the size spectrum and the characteristics of phytoplankton and zooplankton. The model parameters are the sizedependent indicators allometrically linked with average volumes of cells and organisms in different ranges of their sizes. In the model the algorithm for changes over time the coefficients of food preferences in the diet of zooplankton was proposed. Developed the size-dependent mathematical model of aquatic ecosystems allows to consider the impact of turbulent exchange on the size structure and temporal dynamics of the plankton food chain of the Vistula and Curonian lagoons. The model can be used to study the different regimes of dynamic behavior of plankton systems depending on the changes in the values of its parameters and external influences, as well as to quantify the redistribution of matter flows in ecosystems of the lagoons.

The purpose of this work is to develop a universal computer program (solver) which solves kinetic Boltzmann equation for simulations of rarefied gas flows in complexly shaped devices. The structure of the solver is described in details. Its efficiency is demonstrated on an example of calculations of a modern many tubes Knudsen pump. The kinetic Boltzmann equation is solved by finite-difference method on discrete grid in spatial and velocity spaces. The differential advection operator is approximated by finite difference method. The calculation of the collision integral is based on the conservative projection method.

In the developed computational program the unstructured spatial mesh is generated using GMSH and may include prisms, tetrahedrons, hexahedrons and pyramids. The mesh is denser in areas of flow with large gradients of gas parameters. A three-dimensional velocity grid consists of cubic cells of equal volume.

A huge amount of calculations requires effective parallelization of the algorithm which is implemented in the program with the use of Message Passing Interface (MPI) technology. An information transfer from one node to another is implemented as a kind of boundary condition. As a result, every MPI node contains the information about only its part of the grid.

The main result of the work is presented in the graph of pressure difference in 2 reservoirs connected by a multitube Knudsen pump from Knudsen number. This characteristic of the Knudsen pump obtained by numerical methods shows the quality of the pump. Distributions of pressure, temperature and gas concentration in a steady state inside the pump and the reservoirs are presented as well.

The correctness of the solver is checked using two special test solutions of more simple boundary problems — test with temperature distribution between 2 planes with different temperatures and test with conservation of total gas mass.

The correctness of the obtained data for multitube Knudsen pump is checked using denser spatial and velocity grids, using more collisions in collision integral per time step.

In a number of fundamental and practical problems, it is necessary to describe the dynamics of the motion of complexshaped particles in a high-speed gas flow. An example is the movement of coal particles behind the front of a strong shock wave during an explosion in a coal mine. The paper is devoted to numerical simulation of the dynamics of translational and rotational motion of a square-shaped body, as an example of a particle of a more complex shape than a round one, in a supersonic flow behind a passing shock wave. The formulation of the problem approximately corresponds to the experiments of Professor V. M. Boiko and Professor S. V. Poplavski (ITAM SB RAS).

Mathematical model is based on the two-dimensional Euler equations, which are solved in a region with varying boundaries. The defining system of equations is integrated using an explicit scheme and the Cartesian grid method which was developed and verified earlier. The computational algorithm at the time integration step includes: determining the step value, calculating the dynamics of the body movement (determining the force and moment acting on the body; determining the linear and angular velocities of the body; calculating the new coordinates of the body), calculating the gas parameters. To calculate numerical fluxes through the edges of the cell intersected by the boundaries of the body, we use a two-wave approximation for solving the Riemann problem and the Steger – Warming scheme.

The movement of a square with a side of 6 mm was initiated by the passage of a shock wave with a Mach number of 3,0 propagating in a flat channel 800 mm long and 60 mm wide. The channel was filled with air at low pressure. Different initial orientation of the square relative to the channel axis was considered. It is found that the initial position of the square with its side across the flow is less stable during its movement than the initial position with a diagonal across the flow. In this case, the calculated results qualitatively correspond to experimental observations. For the intermediate initial positions of a square, a typical mode of its motion is described, consisting of oscillations close to harmonic, turning into rotation with a constant average angular velocity. During the movement of the square, there is an average monotonous decrease in the distance between the center of mass and the center of pressure to zero.

A mathematical model of two-phase capillary-nonequilibrium isothermal flows of incompressible phases in a double porosity medium is constructed. A double porosity medium is considered, which is a composition of two porous media with contrasting capillary properties (absolute permeability, capillary pressure). One of the constituent media has high permeability and is conductive, the second is characterized by low permeability and forms an disconnected system of matrix blocks. A feature of the model is to take into account the influence of capillary nonequilibrium on mass transfer between subsystems of double porosity, while the nonequilibrium properties of two-phase flow in the constituent media are described in a linear approximation within the Hassanizadeh model. Homogenization by the method of formal asymptotic expansions leads to a system of partial differential equations, the coefficients of which depend on internal variables determined from the solution of cell problems. Numerical solution of cell problems for a system of partial differential equations is computationally expensive. Therefore, a thermodynamically consistent kinetic equation is formulated for the internal parameter characterizing the phase distribution between the subsystems of double porosity. Dynamic relative phase permeability and capillary pressure in the processes of drainage and impregnation are constructed. It is shown that the capillary nonequilibrium of flows in the constituent subsystems has a strong influence on them. Thus, the analysis and modeling of this factor is important in transfer problems in systems with double porosity.

This article presents the results of an analytical and computer study of the chaotic evolution of a regular velocity field generated by a large-scale harmonic forcing. The authors obtained an analytical solution for the flow stream function and its derivative quantities (velocity, vorticity, kinetic energy, enstrophy and palinstrophy). Numerical modeling of the flow evolution was carried out using the OpenFOAM software package based on incompressible model, as well as two inhouse implementations of CABARET and McCormack methods employing nearly incompressible formulation. Calculations were carried out on a sequence of nested meshes with 64², 128², 256², 512², 1024² cells for two characteristic (asymptotic) Reynolds numbers characterizing laminar and turbulent evolution of the flow, respectively. Simulations show that blow-up of the analytical solution takes place in both cases. The energy characteristics of the flow are discussed relying upon the energy curves as well as the dissipation rates. For the fine mesh, this quantity turns out to be several orders of magnitude less than its hydrodynamic (viscous) counterpart. Destruction of the regular flow structure is observed for any of the numerical methods, including at the late stages of laminar evolution, when numerically obtained distributions are close to analytics. It can be assumed that the prerequisite for the development of instability is the error accumulated during the calculation process. This error leads to unevenness in the distribution of vorticity and, as a consequence, to the variance vortex intensity and finally leads to chaotization of the flow. To study the processes of vorticity production, we used two integral vorticity-based quantities — integral enstrophy ($\zeta$) and palinstrophy $(P)$. The formulation of the problem with periodic boundary conditions allows us to establish a simple connection between these quantities. In addition, $\zeta$ can act as a measure of the eddy resolution of the numerical method, and palinstrophy determines the degree of production of small-scale vorticity.

Mathematical model of infiltrative tumour growth taking into account transitions between two possible states of malignant cell is investigated. These transitions are considered to depend on oxygen level in a threshold manner: high oxygen concentration allows cell proliferation, while concentration below some critical value induces cell migration. Dependence of infiltrative tumour spreading rate on model parameters has been studied. It is demonstrated that if the level of tissue oxygenation is high, tumour spreading rate remains almost constant; otherwise the spreading rate decreases dramatically with oxygen depletion.

A two-dimensional system of excitable cells, describing by the FitzHugh-Nagumo model, has been used for a theoretical investigation of an action potential propagation (AP) in vascular plant tissues. It is shown that growth of electrical conductivity between cells increases the AP generation threshold and its propagation velocity in the homogeneous system, which has been formed by equal elements. The plant symplast has been
described by the heterogeneous system, including elements with low electrical conductivity, which simulate parenchyma cells, and elements with high electrical conductivity, which simulate sieve elements. Analysis of this system shows that the threshold of the AP generation is similar with this threshold in the homogeneous system
with low electrical conductivity; the velocity of the AP propagation is faster than one in this system.