Unsteady Two-Phase Flow Analysis on Water Retarder Performance Using Sliding Mesh Technique and VOF Method

Abstract

Hydraulic retarders are used as auxiliary brake system in heavy vehicles and high speed trains. A hydraulic retarder is composed of two parts, a rotor and a stator. When the system is activated, the working fluid is injected into the wheel and circulates between the rotor and stator vanes using the resisting torque of the stator to slow down the vehicle. The purpose of this research is to investigate a water retarder system and the details of flow characteristics of the water, and to investigate the device performance as well. The water retarder is basically composed of a rotor and a stator. In the present research, the rotor rotating speed is fixed at 2000 rpm. Since the performance characteristic of the water retarder is dependent upon the water volume ratio, different volume ratios have been investigated. In this paper water retarder simulations are carried out using CFD using sliding mesh technique. To capture the unsteady effects, the cases have been solved as transient simulations using standard k-ε turbulence model. The simulations have been solved as two phase flow, water and air. The results are compared for different water volume ratios. The result show that the air particles are accumulated in the center of the wheels forming a tube shape (doughnut shape) and water particles are at the outside, wrapping the air particles. In addition, torque values are sensitively dependent upon water volume fraction.