Numerical investigation on the jet pump performance based on different turbulence models

Abstract

This paper aims to figure out the influence of turbulence model and wall boundary condition on the simulation of performance and flow field of jet pumps. And then try to find out one combination of turbulence model and wall treatment method that gives out more accurate performance prediction and reasonable internal flow details. Six turbulence models, (namely the three k-epsilon, the standard and SST k-omega, and Reynolds stress models) and two wall treatment methods (standard wall functions and enhanced wall treatment) were involved. A jet pump model used in an experiment was chosen as the simulation prototype. The static pressure distribution along the wall and the performance data from the experiment were used as the reference data for validating with those from the simulation results. It is found that all the ten combinations agree well with the experiment data when the volumetric flow ratio is low, however, none of them could give a performance prediction with errors less than 10% under the lager flow ratio work conditions. The errors between predicted results by several combinations and the experiment data were lowered to be less than 5% under all the working conditions by adjusting the model constants.