Analysis of a smart clutch with cooling flow using two-dimensional bingham plastic analysis and computational fluid dynamics

Abstract

Two-dimensional (orthogonal) steady isothermal flows of a Bingham plastic between two plates, one moving and the other stationary, are discussed. This is done principally to examine and quantify the concept of cooling a smart clutch by throughflow. The fluid is modelled conventionally as an ideal Bingham plastic to verify the subsequent use of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package for similar flows in more complex situations but with a futuristic view to including heat transfer, electrical conductance, thermal and shear rate effects on fluid properties, and unsteady motion. The CFD (Fluent) package incorporates a user-defined subroutine facility which allows non-Newtonian constitutive models to be incorporated. Both radial and concentric geometries are considered. The two approaches (conventional analysis and CFD) are seen to complement one another.