Numerical simulation of 3D unsteady flow in a rotating pump by dynamic mesh technique

Abstract

In this paper, the numerical simulation of unsteady flow for three kinds of typical rotating pumps, roots blower, roto-jet pump and centrifugal pump, were performed using the three-dimensional Dynamic Mesh technique. In the unsteady simulation, all the computational domains, as stationary, were set in one inertial reference frame. The motions of the solid boundaries were defined by the Profile file in FLUENT commercial code, in which the rotational orientation and speed of the rotors were specified. Three methods (Spring-based Smoothing, Dynamic Layering and Local Re-meshing) were used to achieve mesh deformation and re-meshing. The unsteady solutions of flow field and pressure distribution were solved. After a start-up stage, the flow parameters exhibit time-periodic behaviour corresponding to blade passing frequency of rotor. This work shows that Dynamic Mesh technique could achieve numerical simulation of three-dimensional unsteady flow field in various kinds of rotating pumps and have a strong versatility and broad application prospects.