Pressure drop control using multiple orifice system in compressible pipe flows

Abstract

In order to investigate the effectiveness of an orifice system in producing pressure drops and the effect of compressibility on the pressure drop, computations using the mass-averaged implicit Navier-Stokes equations were applied to the axisymmetric pipe flows with the operating pressure ratio from 1.5 to 20.0. The standard k- ɛ turbulence model was employed to close the governing equations. Numerical calculations were carried out for some combinations of the multiple orifice configurations. The present CFD data showed that the orifice systems, which have been applied to incompressible flow regime to date, could not be used for the high operating pressure ratio flows. The orifice interval did not strongly affect the total pressure drop, but the orifice area ratio more than 2.5 led to relatively high pressure drops. The total pressure drop rapidly increased in the range of the operating pressure ratio from 1.5 to 4.0, but it nearly did not increase when the operating pressure ratio was over 4.0. In the compressible pipe flows through double and triple orifice systems, the total pressure drop was largely due to shock losses.