Tutorial: Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Introduction
The purpose of this tutorial is to illustrate how to set up and run a water pump calculation using FLUENT. The tutorial describes the solution for a single phase ow without cavitation eects and multiphase ow with cavitation. In this tutorial you will learn to: Setup a model for a water pump. Model cavitation in a water pump. Use the multiple reference frame (MRF) and turbulence models. Setup the solution parameters. Solve for steady-state solution.

Prerequisites
This tutorial assumes that you are familiar with the FLUENT interface, have a good understanding of the basic setup and solution procedures, and that you have solved Tutorial 1 of the FLUENT Tutorial Guide. For information on using multiple rotating reference frames, refer to Tutorial 8 of the FLUENT Tutorial Guide. To solve problems using MRF model, you should be familiar with the concept of creating multiple uid zones in a grid generator.

Problem Description
The problem involves modeling ow in a generic automotive water pump. The schematic is shown in Figure 1. The ow features associated with the pump impeller rotation are analyzed using MRF model. The MRF approach is a time-averaged ow solution for the given (frozen) impeller position, yielding a steady-state solution.

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

The MRF model requires the uid around the impeller to be placed in a separate zone (Figure 2). The shape of this zone is arbitrary, as long as its boundaries are surfaces of revolution. The typical placement of the zone with respect to the impeller is such that it is midway between the impeller and smallest radius of the volute (Figure 3).

Figure 1: Problem Schematic

Figure 2: MRF Zones

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Figure 3: MRF Interface

Preparation
1. Copy the le, water-pump.msh.gz to your working directory. 2. Start the 3D version of FLUENT. 3. Read the mesh le, water-pump.msh.gz.

Setup and Solution

Step 1: Grid 1. Check the Grid. Grid Check 2. Examine the total cell count. Grid Info Size The mesh consists of 242717 cells. 3. Examine the domain size. Grid Scale... FLUENT assumes that the geometry was created in meters. Hence, it is recommended that you check the minimum and maximum values reported in the Scale Grid panel to verify whether the mesh needs to be scaled to the appropriate units.

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Note: This mesh has been scaled and scaling is not necessary. 4. Display the grid. Display Grid... (a) Under Options, disable Faces and enable Edges. (b) Click Display (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Grid Display Step 2: Models 1. Retain the default solver settings. Dene Models Solver... 2. Enable the standard k- turbulence model and standard wall function. Dene Models Viscous... Step 3: Materials Change the default working uid (air) to water. Dene Materials... 1. Click Database... to open the Database Materials panel. (a) Select water-liquid in the Fluid Materials list and click Copy. 2. Click Change/Create in the Materials panel. 4

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Step 4: Operating Conditions 1. Retain the default operating conditions. Step 5: Boundary Conditions Dene Boundary Conditions... 1. Dene boundary conditions for uid-impeller zone. (a) Select water-liquid as Material Name. (b) Set motion type as Moving Reference Frame. The panel expands to show relevant controls. (c) Set speed to 4000 rpm. The Rotation-Axis Origin and Rotation-Axis Direction coincide with the default values. Hence retain default values. 2. Set water-liquid as Material Name for the uid-inlet, uid-outlet, and uid-volute zones. 3. Dene boundary conditions for inlet. (a) Set the following parameters: Parameter Mass Flow Rate (kg/s) Direction Specication Method Turbulence Specication Method Turbulence Intensity (%) Hydraulic Diameter (cm) 4. Dene boundary conditions for outlet. (a) Set the following parameters: Parameter Gauge Pressure (pascal) Turbulence Specication Method Backow Turbulence Intensity (%) Backow Hydraulic Diameter (cm) 5. Dene boundary conditions for wall impeller. (a) Under Wall Motion, enable Moving Wall. (b) Under Motion, enable Relative to Adjacent Cell Zone and Rotational. (c) Set Speed to 0. The default setting for wall motion is Stationary Wall. Retain the default setting for the remaining walls. Value 400000 Intensity and Hydraulic Diameter 7 4 Value 3 Normal to Boundary Intensity and Hydraulic Diameter 7 3.5

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Step 6: Solution Without Cavitation 1. Set the solution controls. Solve Controls Solution... (a) Under Discretization, select Body Force Weighted scheme for Pressure. 2. Dene surface monitors to monitor the solution. Solve Monitors Surface... (a) In the Surface Monitors panel, increase the number of Surface Monitors to 2. (b) Enable Plot, Print, and Write for both the monitors. (c) Dene a monitor for static pressure at inlet. i. Click Dene... for monitor-1. The Dene Surface Monitor panel opens. ii. Under Report Of, select Pressure... and Static Pressure. iii. Under Report Type, select Area-Weighted Average. iv. Under Surfaces, select inlet. (d) Dene a monitor for mass ow rate at outlet. i. Click Dene... for monitor-2. The Dene Surface Monitor panel opens. ii. Under Report Type, select Mass Flow Rate. iii. Under Surfaces, select outlet. 3. Enable plotting of residuals. Solve Monitors Residual Note: Though it is recommended that the convergence criteria for continuity be set to 0.0001 (instead of 0.001) for rotational problems, retain the default values for this tutorial. 4. Initialize the ow from outlet. Solve Initialize Initialize... 5. Save the case and data les as water-pump-1.cas.gz.

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

6. Solve for 1000 iterations. The solution converges in about 600 iterations (see Figure 5). The convergence history of static pressure at inlet and mass ow rate at outlet are shown in Figures 6 and 7, respectively. 7. Set a range for Y-axis of static pressure monitor at inlet. Plot File... This is to enable a better view of the plot change. (a) Click Add... and select the le monitor-1.out. (b) Click Axes... to open the Axes - File XY Plot panel. (c) Under Axis, select Y and under Options, disable Auto Range. (d) Set the range to a Minimum of 0 and a Maximum of 500000. (e) Click Apply and close the panel. (f) Click Plot in the File XY Plot panel (Figure 6).

Figure 5: Scaled Residuals

8. Save the data le as water-pump-2.dat.gz.

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Figure 6: Convergence History of Static Pressure at Inlet

Figure 7: Convergence History of Mass Flow Rate at Outlet

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Step 7: Postprocessing Without Cavitation 1. Report ow rate through the pump. Report Fluxes... (a) Retain Mass Flow Rate under Options. (b) Under Boundaries, select inlet and outlet. (c) Click Compute. The incoming mass ux should closely balance the outgoing ux. 2. Calculate the pressure rise across the pump. Compute pressure at the inlet. Report Surface Integrals... (a) Under Report Type, select Area-Weighted Average. (b) Under Field Variable, select Pressure... and Static Pressure. (c) Under Surfaces, select inlet. (d) Click Compute. The dierence between the inlet and outlet pressures is the pressure rise from inlet to outlet. Inlet pressure is 95984.22 Pa and the pressure rise is about 304016 Pa (static pressure at the outlet was set to 400000 Pa.). 3. Create an iso-surface at a constant grid and angular coordinate and display contour plots of pressure and velocity. Surface Iso-Surface (a) Under Surface of Constant, select Grid... and Angular Coordinate. (b) Under Iso-Values, enter 70 . (c) Under New Surface Name, enter angular=70. (d) Click Create. (e) In the Contours panel, under Contours Of, select Pressure... and Absolute Pressure. (f) Select the iso-surface and click Display. (g) Similarly, display the contours of velocity magnitude of the iso-surface. Similarly, you can dene iso-surfaces at other locations and display contour plots. 4. Display contours of absolute pressure for the impeller (Figure 8). Display Contours... (a) Under Contours Of, select Pressure and Absolute Pressure. (b) Under Options, enable Draw Grid. The Grid Display panel opens. (c) Click Display and close the panel.

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

(d) In the Contours panel, under Surfaces, select wall-impeller. If you try to display the contours of the impeller at this stage, the walls of the pump will obstruct your view. To avoid this, we have to reset the transparency of the walls. (e) Set the transparency of the walls. Display Scene... i. In the Scene Description panel, under Names select all the surfaces. ii. Click Display.... The Display Properties panel opens. iii. Set the Transparency slider to 80. You can also set the color of the selected surfaces using the Red, Green, and Blue sliders. iv. Click Apply. (f) Click Display (Figure 8). The walls of the pump are semi-transparent and reveal the impeller in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Contours of Absolute Pressure on the Impeller Note: The solution shows negative absolute pressures indicating cavitation. You get a negative value because, when the static pressure falls below vapor pressure, the liquid begins to cavitate with mass transfer occurring from liquid phase to vapor phase. This mass transfer allows absolute pressure to remain positive in an actual liquid. But the pressure eld becomes negative in the current water pump model because it was set up for a single phase.

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Step 8: Modeling Cavitation 1. Dene water-vapor material properties. Dene Materials... (a) Click Database.... The Database Materials panel opens. (b) Under Fluid Materials select water-vapor (h2o). (c) Click Copy and close the panel. 2. Enable the multiphase model. Dene Models Multiphase... (a) Under Model, enable Mixture. (b) Disable Slip Velocity and enable Cavitation. (c) Retain default values for other parameters. 3. Dene primary and secondary phases. Dene Phases... (a) Under Phase, select phase-1 and click Set.... The Primary Phase panel opens. i. Under Name, enter water-liquid. ii. Set Phase Material to water-liquid, and click OK. (b) Similarly, set the Secondary Phase as water-vapor. 4. Modify inlet mass ow. Dene Boundary Conditions... (a) Under Zone, select inlet. (b) Under Phase, select water-vapor and click Set.... The Mass-Flow Inlet panel opens. (c) Set the Mass Flow-Rate to 0. Retain the default value of 3 kg/s for the mass ow rate of liquid phase. 5. Conrm that the backow volume fraction for vapor phase at outlet is set to 0.

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

6. Change the under-relaxation factors. Solve Controls Solution... (a) Set the following parameters: Parameter Pressure Density Body Forces Momentum Vaporization Mass Volume Fraction Turbulence Kinetic Energy Turbulence Dissipation Rate Turbulent Viscosity 7. Under-relax the pressure correction equation. (a) Type the following command in the FLUENT console window:
> (rpsetvar pressure-correction/relax 0.4) <Enter>

Value 0.5 0.5 1 0.1 0.4 0.1 0.3 0.3 0.3

The default value is 0.7. However, the value may need to be lowered when modeling cavitation. Typical range of parameter values for cavitating problems is 0.4-0.7 and are not to be reduced below 0.4. 8. Initialize the solution from outlet. Retain the vapor volume fraction at 0. 9. Save the case and data les as water-pump-3.cas.gz. 10. Solve for 3000 iterations. The scaled residuals are shown in Figure 9. The convergence history of static pressure at inlet and mass ow rate at outlet is shown in Figures 10 and 11, respectively. The convergence history of static pressure at inlet is displayed as in Step 6-7. 11. Save the case and data les.

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Figure 9: Scaled Residuals

Figure 10: Convergence History of Static Pressure at Inlet

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Figure 11: Convergence history of Mass Flow Rate at Outlet

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Modeling Water Pumps with and Without Cavitation

Step 9: Postprocessing 1. Display the contours of absolute pressure of the impeller. Display Contours...

Figure 12: Contours of Absolute Pressure The absolute pressure has recovered to positive values in Figure 12.

Summary
In this tutorial you learned to set up a water pump model with and without cavitation. The multiple reference frame (MRF) model was used to yield a steady-state solution. The case was initially considered without cavitation (single phase) and later with cavitation (multiphase). The pressure eld for the initial solution had negative values as there was no provision for mass transfer from one phase to another. This indicated cavitation, but not the actual size of the cavitating bubble. You then modeled the problem for multiphase ow by introducing a secondary phase which allowed mass transfer. The nal solution showed that the absolute pressure had positive values.

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