Prediction of Flow Path Pressure Drops in Curved Galleries for Additively Manufactured Hydraulic Manifolds

Hydraulic manifolds are traditionally manufactured using externally drilled intersecting galleries. This results in undesirable artefacts in the flow path such as sharp corners, and dead oil volumes, and requires additional plugs to blank redundant holes. These artefacts affect flow separation, aggravate pressure-drop and reduce hydraulic stiffness. Recent advancements in additive manufacturing (AM) technology have enabled the development of additively manufactured components which provide greater freedom in channel design and routing. Galleries can provide flow paths which are smoothly curved in 3 dimensions. AM manifold geometry can be optimized to reduce size and weight. In this research, analytical expressions are sought to approximate pressure drops in complex curved flow paths, which can subsequently be used for manifold optimization. The curved flow paths are defined by polynomial splines which are then fragmented into a series of segments each defined by a bend angle and bend radius. This paper uses approximations to Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results to form pressure-drop models over a range of segment bend radii and angles. These models are then used to predict the pressure drops for curved galleries used in AM manifolds. The method is applied to four example curved galleries, and provides a reasonably accurate pressure-drop prediction in each case.