Numerical Analysis of External Gear Pumps Including Cavitation

2012 ◽  
Vol 134 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
D. del Campo ◽  
R. Castilla ◽  
G. A. Raush ◽  
P. J. Gamez Montero ◽  
E. Codina

Hydraulic machines are faced with increasingly severe performance requirements. The need to design smaller and more powerful machines rotating at higher speeds in order to provide increasing efficiencies has to face a major limitation: cavitation. The problem is inherently three-dimensional, due to the axial clearances, the relief and circumferential grooves, and to the circular pipes through which the fluid enters and exits the pump. A simplified two-dimensional numerical approach by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been developed for studying the effect of cavitation in the volumetric efficiency of external gear pumps. The assumptions employed prevent from predicting realistic values of the volumetric efficiency, but show to be valid to understand the complex flow patterns that take place inside the pump and to study the influence of cavitation on volumetric efficiency. A method for simulating the contact between solid boundaries by imposing changes in viscosity has been developed. Experiments of unsteady cavitation in water and oil performed by other authors have been numerically reproduced using different cavitation models in order to select the most appropriate one and to adjust its parameters. The influence of the rotational speed of the pump has been analyzed. Cavitation in the suction chamber very effectively damps the water hammer associated to the sudden change of the contact point position at the end of the gearing cycle. At high rotational speeds, the volume of air becomes more stable, reducing the flow irregularity. When cavitation takes place at the meshing region downstream from the contact point, the volume of air that appears acts as a virtual second contact point, increasing the volumetric efficiency of the pump.

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (15) ◽  
pp. 4468
Author(s):  
Paulina Szwemin ◽  
Wieslaw Fiebig

The design of gear pumps and motors is focused on more efficient units which are possible to achieve using advanced numerical simulation techniques. The flow that appears inside the gear pump is very complex, despite the simple design of the pump itself. The identification of fluid flow phenomena in areas inside the pump, considering the entire range of operating parameters, is a major challenge. This paper presents the results of simulation studies of leakages in axial and radial gaps in an external gear pump carried out for different gap shapes and sizes, as well as various operating parameters. To investigate the processes that affect pump efficiency and visualize the fluid flow phenomena during the pump’s operation, a CFD model was built. It allows for a detailed analysis of the impact of the gears’ eccentricity on leakages and pressure build-up on the circumference. Performed simulations made it possible to indicate the relationship between leakages resulting from the axial and radial gap, which has not been presented so far. To verify the CFD model, experimental investigations on the volumetric efficiency of the external gear pump were carried out. Good convergence of results was obtained; therefore, the presented CFD model is a universal tool in the study of flow inside external gear pumps.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 342
Author(s):  
Alessandro Corvaglia ◽  
Massimo Rundo ◽  
Paolo Casoli ◽  
Antonio Lettini

The paper presents the computational fluid dynamics simulation of an external gear pump for fluid power applications. The aim of the study is to test the capability of the model to evaluate the pressure in a tooth space for the entire shaft revolution and the minimum inlet pressure for the complete filling. The model takes into account the internal fluid leakages and two different configurations of the thrust plates have been considered. The simulations in different operating conditions have been validated with proper high dynamics transducers measuring the internal pressure in a tooth space for the entire shaft revolution. Steady-state simulations have been also performed in order to detect the fall of the flow rate due to the incomplete filling of the tooth spaces when the inlet pressure is reduced. It has been demonstrated that, despite the need of a compromise for overcoming the limitation of considering fixed positions of the gears’ axes and of the thrust plates, significant results can be obtained, making the CFD approach very suitable for such analyses.


Author(s):  
Roberto Biollo ◽  
Ernesto Benini

The progress of numerical methods and computing facilities has led to using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) as a current tool for designing components of gas turbine engines. It is known, however, that a sophisticated numerical model is required to well reproduce the many complex flow phenomena which characterize compression systems, such as shock waves and their interactions with boundary layers and tip clearance flows. In this work, the flow field inside the NASA Rotor 37, a well known test case representative of complex three-dimensional viscous flow structures in transonic bladings, was simulated using a commercial CFD code based on the 3-D Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations. In order to improve the accuracy of predictions, different aspects of the numerical model were analyzed; in particular, an attempt was made to understand the influence of grid topology, number of nodes and their distribution, turbulence model, and discretization scheme of numerical solution on the accuracy of computed results. Existing experimental data were used to assess the quality of the solutions. The obtainment of a good agreement between computed and measured performance maps and downstream profiles was clearly shown. Also, detailed comparisons with experimental results indicated that the overall features of the three-dimensional shock structure, the shock-boundary layer interaction, and the wake development can be calculated very well in the numerical approach for all the operating conditions. The possibility for a numerical model to better understand the aerodynamic behaviour of existing transonic compressors and to help the design of new configurations was demonstrated. It was also pointed out that the development of an accurate model requires the knowledge of both the physical phenomena place within the flow field and the features of the code which model them.


2007 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhi Chen ◽  
Lin Zhao ◽  
Kenneth Lee ◽  
Charles Hannath

Abstract There has been a growing interest in assessing the risks to the marine environment from produced water discharges. This study describes the development of a numerical approach, POM-RW, based on an integration of the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) and a Random Walk (RW) simulation of pollutant transport. Specifically, the POM is employed to simulate local ocean currents. It provides three-dimensional hydrodynamic input to a Random Walk model focused on the dispersion of toxic components within the produced water stream on a regional spatial scale. Model development and field validation of the predicted current field and pollutant concentrations were conducted in conjunction with a water quality and ecological monitoring program for an offshore facility located on the Grand Banks of Canada. Results indicate that the POM-RW approach is useful to address environmental risks associated with the produced water discharges.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 251
Author(s):  
Piotr Osiński ◽  
Grzegorz Chruścielski ◽  
Leszek Korusiewicz

This article presents theoretical and experimental calculations of the minimum thickness of a compensation lip used in external gear pumps. Pumps of this type are innovative technical solutions in which circumferential backlash (clearance) compensation is used to improve their volumetric and overall efficiency. However, constructing a prototype of such a pump requires long-lasting research, and the compensation lip is its key object, due to the fact that it is an element influenced by a notch and that it operates in unfavorable conditions of strong fatigue stresses. The theoretical calculations presented in this article are based on identifying maximum stress values in a fatigue cycle and on implementing the stress failure condition and the conditions related to the required value of the fatigue safety factor. The experimental research focuses on static bending tests of the lips as well as on the fatigue loading of the lips in series of tests at increasing stress values until lip failure due to fatigue. The tests allowed the minimum lip thickness to be found for the assumed number of fatigue cycles, which is 2.5 times the number of cycles used in wear margin tests.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (15) ◽  
pp. 6972
Author(s):  
Lihua Cui ◽  
Fei Ma ◽  
Tengfei Cai

The cavitation phenomenon of the self-resonating waterjet for the modulation of erosion characteristics is investigated in this paper. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed to analyze the unsteady characteristics of the self-resonating jet. The numerical model employs the mixture two-phase model, coupling the realizable turbulence model and Schnerr–Sauer cavitation model. Collected data from experimental tests were used to validate the model. Results of numerical simulations and experimental data frequency bands obtained by the Fast Fourier transform (FFT) method were in very good agreement. For better understanding the physical phenomena, the velocity, the pressure distributions, and the cavitation characteristics were investigated. The obtained results show that the sudden change of the flow velocity at the outlet of the nozzle leads to the forms of the low-pressure zone. When the pressure at the low-pressure zone is lower than the vapor pressure, the cavitation occurs. The flow field structure of the waterjet can be directly perceived through simulation, which can provide theoretical support for realizing the modulation of the erosion characteristics, optimizing nozzle structure.


2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Schmidt-Rohr

A simple numerical approach for calculating theq-dependence of the scattering intensity in small-angle X-ray or neutron scattering (SAXS/SANS) is discussed. For a user-defined scattering density on a lattice, the scattering intensityI(q) (qis the modulus of the scattering vector) is calculated by three-dimensional (or two-dimensional) numerical Fourier transformation and spherical summation inqspace, with a simple smoothing algorithm. An exact and simple correction for continuous rather than discrete (lattice-point) scattering density is described. Applications to relatively densely packed particles in solids (e.g.nanocomposites) are shown, where correlation effects make single-particle (pure form-factor) calculations invalid. The algorithm can be applied to particles of any shape that can be defined on the chosen cubic lattice and with any size distribution, while those features pose difficulties to a traditional treatment in terms of form and structure factors. For particles of identical but potentially complex shapes, numerical calculation of the form factor is described. Long parallel rods and platelets of various cross-section shapes are particularly convenient to treat, since the calculation is reduced to two dimensions. The method is used to demonstrate that the scattering intensity from `randomly' parallel-packed long cylinders is not described by simple 1/qand 1/q4power laws, but at cylinder volume fractions of more than ∼25% includes a correlation peak. The simulations highlight that the traditional evaluation of the peak position overestimates the cylinder thickness by a factor of ∼1.5. It is also shown that a mix of various relatively densely packed long boards can produceI(q) ≃ 1/q, usually observed for rod-shaped particles, without a correlation peak.


Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 1077
Author(s):  
Muhammad Tamoor ◽  
Muhammad Kamran ◽  
Sadique Rehman ◽  
Aamir Farooq ◽  
Rewayat Khan ◽  
...  

In this study, a numerical approach was adopted in order to explore the analysis of magneto fluid in the presence of thermal radiation combined with mixed convective and slip conditions. Using the similarity transformation, the axisymmetric three-dimensional boundary layer equations were reduced to a self-similar form. The shooting technique, combined with the Range–Kutta–Fehlberg method, was used to solve the resulting coupled nonlinear momentum and heat transfer equations numerically. When physically interpreting the data, some important observations were made. The novelty of the present study lies in finding help to control the rate of heat transfer and fluid velocity in any industrial manufacturing processes (such as the cooling of metallic plates). The numerical results revealed that the Nusselt number decrease for larger Prandtl number, curvature, and convective parameters. At the same time, the skin friction coefficient was enhanced with an increase in both slip velocity and convective parameter. The effect of emerging physical parameters on velocity and temperature profiles for a nonlinear stretching cylinder has been thoroughly studied and analyzed using plotted graphs and tables.


Author(s):  
Jiehai Zhang ◽  
Arun Muley ◽  
Joseph B. Borghese ◽  
Raj M. Manglik

Enhanced heat transfer characteristics of low Reynolds number airflows in three-dimensional sinusoidal wavy plate-fin channels are investigated. For the computational simulation, steady state, constant property, periodically developed, laminar forced convection is considered with the channel surface at the uniform heat flux condition; the wavy-fin is modeled by its two asymptotic limits of 100% and zero fin efficiency. The governing equations are solved numerically using finite-volume techniques for a non-orthogonal, non-staggered grid. Computational results for velocity and temperature distribution, isothermal Fanning friction factor f and Colburn factor j are presented for airflow rates in the range of 10 ≤ Re ≤ 1500. The numerical results are further compared with experimental data, with excellent agreement, for two different wavy-fin geometries. The influence of fin density on the flow behavior and the enhanced convection heat transfer are highlighted. Depending on the flow rate, a complex flow structure is observed, which is characterized by the generation, spatial growth and dissipation of vortices in the trough region of the wavy channel. The thermal boundary layers on the fin surface are periodically disrupted, resulting in high local heat fluxes. The overall heat transfer performance is improved considerably, compared to the straight channel with the same cross-section, with a relatively smaller increase in the associated pressure drop penalty.


Author(s):  
Ch. Hirsch ◽  
S. Kang ◽  
G. Pointel

The three-dimensional flow in centrifugal impellers is investigated on the basis of a detailed analysis of the results of numerical simulations. In order to gain confidence in this process, an in-depth validation is performed, based on computations of Krain’s centrifugal compressor and of a radial pump impeller, both with vaneless diffusers. Detailed comparisons with available experimental data provide high confidence in the numerical tools and results. The appearance of a high loss ‘wake’ region results from the transport of boundary layer material from the blade surfaces to the shroud region and its location depends on the balance between secondary and tip leakage flows and is not necessarily connected to 3D boundary layer separation. Although the low momentum spots near the shroud can interfere with 3D separated regions, the main outcome of the present analysis is that these are two distinct phenomena. Part I of this paper focuses on the validation base of the numerical approach, based on fine mesh simulations, while Part II presents an analysis of the different contributions to the secondary flows and attempts to estimate their effect on the overall flow pattern.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document