Pipe Flow Simulation using Solidworks

Project Goals:

The purpose of this project is to run a parametric study of a pipe flow simulation with inlet Reynolds number of 100, 1000, 10000 using Solidworks Flow Simulation.

Model:

The model is a 25mm diameter pipe of length 1m with a wall thickness of 1mm. Three line probes were inserted at 0.85m, 0.90m, and 0.95m respectively. Both the ends were closed with a 5mm lid to create a solid boundary for the fluid flow.

Mesh

The model has the following mesh settings with more numbers of cells per z

Simulation:

The flow consists of water as the fluid medium which has the following initial conditions Pressure 101325 Pa and temperature 293.2K. The analysis is of internal type. The boundary conditions were assigned to the inlet, outlet, and wall. The outlet is a pressure outlet and the wall is an adiabatic wall which allows no element to pass through. This parametric study is carried out for three inlet Reynolds numbers 100, 1000, and 10000. The velocity for the respective Reynolds number was found using the following Matlab program.

%Velocity for a given Reynolds number
%Reynolds number = Diameter of pipe * Velocity / Kinematic Viscosity

%Diameter of pipe in meter
d=0.025;

%Kinematic Viscosity of Water at 15 deg C
k=1.1384 * 10^-6;

%reynolds number
R=[100 1000 10000];

%velocity
v=(R*k)/d

***************************************************

%Output
v =

    0.0046    0.0455    0.4554

Results

The velocity profile obtained from the study is normalized using the inlet velocity. The following charts show the normalized velocity profile at the three line probe locations.

Normalized velocity at 0.85m

Normalized velocity at 0.90m

Normalized Velocity at 0.95m

The cut plot for velocity profile at the three line probe positions are as follows

At .85m

Reynolds no 100 Reynolds no 1000 Reynolds no 10000

At .90m

Reynolds no 100 Reynolds no 1000 Reynolds no 10000

At .95m

Reynolds no 100 Reynolds no 1000 Reynolds no 10000

Conclusion:

From the parametric study, it is found that the flow is laminar for Reynolds no 100 and 1000. But the flow is turbulent for Reynolds number 10000.