In Rayleigh-Bénard convection (RBC) for fluids with Prandtl number Pr1, rotation beyond a critical (small) rotation rate is known to cause a sudden enhancement of heat transfer, which can be explained by a change in the character of the boundary layer (BL) dynamics near the top and bottom plates of the convection cell. Namely, with increasing rotation rate, the BL signature suddenly changes from Prandtl-Blasius type to Ekman type.

Background and Objective: The paper focuses on the numerical strategies to optimize a plasmid DNA delivery protocol, which combines hyaluronidase and electroporation. Methods: A well-defined continuum mechanics model of muscle porosity and advanced numerical optimization strategies have been used, to propose a substantial improvement of a pre-existing experimental protocol of DNA transfer in mice. Our work suggests that a computational model might help in the definition of innovative therapeutic procedures, thanks to the fine tuning of all the involved experimental steps.

The dynamics of inertial particles in Rayleigh-Benard convection, where both particles and fluid exhibit thermal expansion, is studied using direct numerical simulations (DNS) in the soft-turbulence regime. We consider the effect of particles with a thermal expansion coefficient larger than that of the fluid, causing particles to become lighter than the fluid near the hot bottom plate and heavier than the fluid near the cold top plate.

The process of aircraft refueling has crucial impact in the performance of an airport. It is in fact of common knowledge that one of the most important indicators for benchmarking an airport is the punctuality of flights departure. To assure high results, the airplane service activities such as passengers boarding, baggage handling and aircraft refueling must not delay one another and the overall departure time.

In this paper, we develop a three-dimensional multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann method (MRT-LBM) based on a set of non-orthogonal basis vectors. Compared with the classical MRT-LBM based on a set of orthogonal basis vectors, the present non-orthogonal MRT-LBM simplifies the transformation between the discrete velocity space and the moment space and exhibits better portability across different lattices.

This paper studies a scheduling problem application for the optimization of the employees used in aircrafts' refueling in a medium size airport. The problem is modelled as a particular resource leveling problem for which we provide a mixed integer mathematical formulation that we solve with CPLEX. The model allows to evaluate and analyse different scenarios that could be considered by the company in place of the current one in order to rearrange the available human resources used in refueling activity.