Encyclopaedia Index

TITLE : Flow in a screw pump

BY : Dr S V Zhubrin, CHAM Ltd

DATE : November, 2000

UPDATED: May 2006

FOR : Demonstration case for PHOENICS 3.3.3 / 3.6.2

INTRODUCTION

Shapemaker has been used to create the helical coil object and the case presented makes use of it for the situation when the rotation of a helix attached to the shaft pumps the fluid.

THE STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This case deals with the fluid flow driven by the tangential movement of screw rotor in a an open ended pipe creating the pumping effect.

COMPUTATIONAL DETAILS

Conservation equations

The independent variables of the problem are the three components of cylindrical polar coordinate system, namely X, Y and Z.

The main dependent (solved for) variables are:

Boundary Condtions

The rotation of the central rotor and the coils is imparted by setting a fixed angular velocity as the surface 'slide velocity' for these objects. The angular rotation speed chosen, 8.333 rad/s, gives a velocity of 1m/s, thus reproducing the original version 3.3 setup.

THE RESULTS

The plots show the distribution of velocity within the pipe.

Pictures are as follows :

Geometry

Velocity contours near the shaft

Velocity vectors near the shaft

Yet another velocity field

THE IMPLEMENTATION

All model settings have been made in VR-Editor of PHOENICS 3.6.2

The relevant Q1 file can be inspected by clicking here.

svz / jcl