The accurate measurement of snowfall is important in various fields of study such as climate variability, transportation, and water resources. A major concern is that snowfall measurements are difficult and can result in significant errors. For example, collection efficiency of most gauge-shield configurations generally decreases with increasing wind speed. In addition, much scatter is observed for a given wind speed, which is thought to be caused by the type of snowflake. Furthermore, the collection efficiency depends strongly on the reference used to correct the data, which is often the Double Fence Intercomparison Reference (DFIR) recommended by the World Meteorological Organization. The goal of this study is to assess the impact of weather conditions on the collection efficiency of the DFIR. Note that the DFIR is defined as a manual gauge placed in a double fence. In this study, however, only the double fence is being investigated while still being called DFIR. To address this issue, a detailed analysis of the flow field in the vicinity of the DFIR is conducted using computational fluid dynamics. Particle trajectories are obtained to compute the collection efficiency associated with different precipitation types for varying wind speed. The results show that the precipitation reaching the center of the DFIR can exceed 100% of the actual precipitation, and it depends on the snowflake type, wind speed, and direction. Overall, this study contributes to a better understanding of the sources of uncertainty associated with the use of the DFIR as a reference gauge to measure snowfall.

The Blended Wing Body aircraft is an innovative concept of transport aircraft, which offers advantageous performance. This original concept requires new design methods adapted to its specificity such as its strong coupling of components. This paper proposes a comprehensive method of preliminary design to obtain a first draft of an aircraft according to requirements. In addition, this paper presents an extended procedure for a low fidelity multidisciplinary optimization and a procedure for airfoil optimization using CFD. Optimization test cases are presented, which resulted in an increase in performance and an improvement of the aircraft stability.

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Numerical simulation of the arc-flow interaction in high-voltage circuit breakers requires a radiation model capable of handling high-temperature participating thermal plasmas. The modeling of the radiative transfer plays a critical role in the overall accuracy of such CFD simulations. As a result of the increase of computational power, CPU intensive methods based on the radiative transfer equation, leading to more accurate results, are now becoming attractive alternatives to current approximate models. In this paper, the predictive capabilities of the finite volume method (RTE-FVM) and the P1 model are investigated. A systematic comparison between these two models and analytical solutions are presented for a variety of relevant test cases. Two implementations of each approach are compared, and a critical evaluation is presented.

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