Analysis of turbulent flow through an orifice meter using experimental and computational fluid dynamics simulation approach—A case study

Abstract

This paper describes the use of computational fluid dynamics in teaching graduate students who were in a four‐year B. Tech program. Many of these students did not have a good background in mathematics, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and programming; however, most of them were good at computer‐aided design in ProE and were very interested in learning computational fluid dynamics as a design tool in industries. Solidworks flow simulator was chosen as the computational fluid dynamics software to teach students the entire computational fluid dynamics process in a single integrated software environment. Based on projects, computational fluid dynamics numerical methods and fundamentals of heat transfer and fluid flow were introduced to help students understand the computational fluid dynamics process, interpret, and validate simulation results. The computational fluid dynamics simulation of an orifice meter is given as the basic example for the students. Orifice meters are the most common equipment used for measuring fluid flow because of their simple mechanical structure, versatility, and low cost. In this paper, computational fluid dynamics simulation has been used to predict the orifice flow with better accuracy. Computational fluid dynamics simulations have been performed using solidworks flow simulator and validated with the data available in published literature. A new system has been proposed to accurately measure the flow using orifice metering systems.