Computer aided calculus of the radial bridge kinetic energy of a sedimentation tank

Abstract

The paper presents energy related aspects of a circular sedimentation tank’s radial bridge in order to assess the effectiveness of the equipment and to propose optimisations. In steady state conditions ETotal = EKinetic + ELosses where ETotal is provided by an electric motor of power P and the kinetic energy is , where . Several methods to assess the value of the J moment of inertia were explored. Finally, the moment of inertia is computed using an analytical method, by dividing the radial bridge in NC ‘simple shape’ components and by the use of an original C++ software consisting of >1700 computer code lines. Being a flexible and heavily parameterized original software, an optimised version of the radial bridge geometry was considered, for which Jopt = 83.57%. Jini We know the time in which a complete rotation is performed, T, therefore we compute ω and the kinetic energy. It results ELosses and we noticed that, because ω has a very small value, most of the ETotal energy is spent to cover the ‘losses’. The computation of the J moment of inertia allowed us to conclude regarding the effectiveness of the equipment and to extent the library of C++ header files to be reused in other software projects for the development of the hybrid models in mechanical engineering.