In the frame of a cooperation between the MEEO (Meteorological and Environment Earth Observation) and the Mathematics Department of the University of Ferrara, Italy, a research has been initiated aiming at developing, testing and applying a computational program, called THERCONF, dedicated to numerical simulations of thermophoretic problems. The program is based on the application of the fundamental laws of molecular dynamics, combined with the statistical methods of the DSMC (Direct Simulation Monte Carlo). The computer program can be applied to a variety of problems, involving thermal creep induced by temperature gradients along heated walls, thermophoretic displacement of aerosol particles in the environment of the upper Earth atmosphere, thermophoretic confinement of cosmic dust particles, migration of fuel debris in nuclear reactor under hypothetical accident conditions. The development work of the code involves both modeling physical details of molecular collisions and improving the performances from the viewpoint of computational efficiency. The latter involves an ongoing effort in establishing a parallel version of the code. The article reviews the most important characteristics of the code from the physical and computational viewpoints and summarizes ongoing research on code validation and application.

Review of Ongoing Developments for Dynamics Simulations of Thermophoretic Problems

ZANGHIRATI, Gaetano
2008

Abstract

In the frame of a cooperation between the MEEO (Meteorological and Environment Earth Observation) and the Mathematics Department of the University of Ferrara, Italy, a research has been initiated aiming at developing, testing and applying a computational program, called THERCONF, dedicated to numerical simulations of thermophoretic problems. The program is based on the application of the fundamental laws of molecular dynamics, combined with the statistical methods of the DSMC (Direct Simulation Monte Carlo). The computer program can be applied to a variety of problems, involving thermal creep induced by temperature gradients along heated walls, thermophoretic displacement of aerosol particles in the environment of the upper Earth atmosphere, thermophoretic confinement of cosmic dust particles, migration of fuel debris in nuclear reactor under hypothetical accident conditions. The development work of the code involves both modeling physical details of molecular collisions and improving the performances from the viewpoint of computational efficiency. The latter involves an ongoing effort in establishing a parallel version of the code. The article reviews the most important characteristics of the code from the physical and computational viewpoints and summarizes ongoing research on code validation and application.
2008
Thermophoretic Models; Monte Carlo Simulations; Parallel Computing
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11392/1382195
 Attenzione

Attenzione! I dati visualizzati non sono stati sottoposti a validazione da parte dell'ateneo

Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact