Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Swirling Flow on Triple Elbow Pipe Layout

Abstract

The secondary flow downstream of a triple elbow layout was studied experimentally and numerically to visualize the flow behavior under swirling inlet flow conditions. The inlet swirling condition was generated by a swirl generator, consisting of a rotary pipe and honeycomb assembly. The experiments were carried out in turbulent water flow condition at Reynolds number Re = 1 × 104 and inlet swirl intensity S = 1. Ultrasonic measurements were taken at four locations downstream of the third elbow. The two-dimensional velocity field of the flow field was measured using the phased array ultrasonic velocity profiler technique to evaluate the flow field with separation. Furthermore, a numerical simulation was performed and its results were compared with the experimental data. The numerical result was obtained by solving three-dimensional, Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with the renormalization group k-ε turbulence model. The experimental results confirmed that the swirling flow condition modified the size of the separation region downstream of the third elbow. A qualitative comparison between the experimental and CFD simulation results of the averaged velocity field downstream of the third elbow showed similar tendency on reverse flow.