Alejandro Rincón Casado

Universidad de Cádiz | UCA · Department of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design

This work presents a study of a ventilated hollow core slab system (VHCS) that obviates the need to completely replace the slab of an existing residential building. It is assimilated to a heat exchanger to allow its effectiveness to be studied as a function of the area and airflow rate. The balance between the energy consumed by the fan and the hea...

This work presents a new parametric correlation for 2D enclosures with forced convection obtained from CFD simulation. The convective heat transfer coefficient of walls for enclosures depends on the geometry of the enclosure and the inlet and outlet openings, the velocity and the air to wall temperature difference. However, current correlations not...

This study presents an experimental methodology aimed at estimating the residual fatigue life of in-service wind turbine bolts. The main objective is to assess the residual life of the bolts to plan their replacement and to avoid unexpected breakages of wind turbine blade connections. To develop the methodology, M16 bolts of quality 10.9 with contr...

In this work, the complex geometry of beams obtained from topology optimization is characterized through the fractal dimension (FD). The fractal dimension is employed as an efficiency measure of the mass distribution in the beams, that is, the capacity of the optimized solutions to be efficiently distributed in the design space. Furthermore, the po...

The rotating beam problem has been extensively used as a benchmark for testing nonlinear finite element implementations. The remarkable characteristic of this benchmark is the coupling between axial a transverse deformations due to the centrifugal forces. The rotating beam dynamics exhibits a centrifugal stiffening effect that can only be captured...

This work describes the design, construction and testing of a thermo-electric conditioning device installed in a neonatal incubator with the aim of improving the precision in the regulation of the interior air temperature, reducing noise and interior vibration, and improving the life of the neonate. A simplified one-dimensional thermal model has be...

This paper deals with the data-driven reduced order modeling of high dimensional systems, using a tensor decomposition plus one-dimensional interpolation. The (many) involved dimensions are usually associated with space, and/or time, and/or various parameters the system may depend on. Three tensor decomposition methods are considered, namely recurs...

There are typically several perturbation methods for approaching the solution of weakly nonlinear vibrations (where the nonlinear terms are “small” compared to the linear ones): the Method of Strained Parameters, the Naive Singular Perturbation Method, the Method of Multiple Scales, the Method of Harmonic Balance and the Method of Averaging. The St...

This paper aims at studying the influence of the different support types on the free nonlinear vibration frequency of a beam, both by analytical and numerical approaches and its dependence on the vibration amplitude. First, an analytical study of two cases of simply supported beams is carried out by using the nonlinear normal modes (NNM) and the mu...

This study presents the results of a numerical and experimental study of the position of the baffles in a solar air heater in order to improve its thermal and hydraulic performance. The numerical study was performed on four cases corresponding to different placements of baffles with Reynolds numbers ranging from 2370 to 8340. The experimental model...

Conventionally, empirical modal analysis requires a known external excitation for a correct identification of the structure´s modal response. Due to this, most field testing must be done under controlled conditions in order to minimize the influence of unknown ambient excitations. Nevertheless, on public structures or service installations, as high...

Spain is a highly decentralized country composed of 17 autonomous communities (regional political and administrative territories), where the power is divided between the central government and a limited self-government of the communities. In the case of the road network, the competences are not completely delegated but the management and planning o...

This paper sets out to describe the design, construction and testing of a thermoelectric-based conditioned mattress intended to reduce the human-mattress interface temperature, in order to increase the user's sleep quality and thermal comfort in warm locations of Spain. A prototype is constructed and tested, which includes a mattress and a thermoel...

This study presents new correlations for internal forced convective heat-transfer coefficients (CHTCs) in buildings. CHTCs are used by building energy performance simulation (BES) tools to estimate the annual heating and cooling demands of buildings. Most programs use constant values or correlations but do not consider in detail the 3D geometry or...

As microclimate modifiers, courtyards may be a good passive strategy for enhancing thermal comfort and reducing the energy demands of buildings. Thus, it is necessary to be able to quantify their tempering effect in dominant summer climates. This is frequently done using calculation methods based on CFD, but these have the drawback of their high co...

This paper presents new correlations to calculate natural convection heat transfer coefficients (CHTC) in enclosures for building performance simulation. Current work related to the development of correlations is not oriented to building enclosures, and the influence of high numbers of Rayleigh (Ra) and aspect ratio on the CHTC has not been studied...

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo calcular de forma detallada los caudales de ventilación e infiltración y analizar su influencia sobre la demanda energética de edificios con uso residencial en España. Actualmente el Código Técnico de la Edificación (CTE) es la normativa española que regula los criterios de diseño, cálculo y la ejecución de las inst...

This research focuses on the influence of outdoor convective heat transfer coefficient on thermal load calculation in Building Energy Simulation programs. In building energy is commonly used the overall heat transfer coefficient value (U-value) to characterize external walls and windows in terms of heat gam or loss through them. Thus, the higher th...

It is clear that the thermophysical properties of materials, occupancy patterns and internal gains represent some of the most important sources of uncertainty in the field of building simulation. Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis deals with this situation, since it can generate a great range of forecast values based on the distribution of the in...