Is there any steady state solution for Gear pump simulation?
 

Most of the Gear Pump simulation in technical papers and in Ansys tutorials was done for Transient condition. Is it possible to get steady state solution for Gear Pump?

Why don't you try it and work it out? I am not 100% sure whether immersed solids works in steady state, so that is what I would do to confirm.

I tried.. it's not converging.. after some 20 iterations, it fails with fatal overflow error.. Mesh quality and resolution is very good (full structured mesh and quality is good as written by solver statistics). Boundary layers are resolved as per y+ value. Initialisation is good. Double precision is used for solving. Still it fails! So I doubt whether there is steady state solution or not?

Gear Pump outlet pressure is pulsating in nature. So can we say there is no steady state solution for Gear Pump?

Is there anything like Immersed solid simulation doesn't support steady state simulation?


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A steady state run of a gear pump would have the rotors stationary, so the flow would be from leakage around the rotors. Obviously this is likely to be small, but in a well resolved model it should be possible.

Note the immersed solid approach works by putting body forces on the elements covered by the body. This means that in the fine gap between the rotor and the wall it may be difficult to get any mesh which is not covered by rotor, and this means you will get no flow (and probably convergence difficulties). Have you got enough mesh in the gap so there can be a flow?

Here I attached the mesh pics and velocity contour at the final iteration before it failed due to fatal linear solver error! Sufficient care is taken to resolve the clearances.
So my doubt is whether the failure is due to Transient nature of the flow or not?
How to confirm this?


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One thing I observed is Immersed solid is able to resolve vortex and fine pressure distribution! However many technical paper claims that Immersed solid is unable to resolve suction and tip vortex!
Am working on it to quantify the accuracy of Immersed solid methods.
Any input regarding this is appreciated
Thanks :)


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The velocity plot doesn't mean much because the simulation diverged so the results are meaningless. More useful is a plot of when the numerical instability is first seen, because that can tell you where the problem area is.

The CFX documentation has several recommendations on convergence with immersed solids. Have you read it, and tried the suggestions?

Immersed solid approach can theoretically resolve any Navier Stokes flow, so you it can model vortex and instabilities and everything else. In fact the open source CFD code gerris does not use wall boundaries for internal features at all, it always uses a similar approach. So some CFD codes only use this approach to model walls.

But it uses mesh less efficiently than a body fitted grid, meaning more mesh to get the same resolution. But when a body fitted grid is not practical (eg gear pumps) then immersed solids is great.

Thanks for the explanation ghorrocks..
Do you mean the rms error convergence plot?

Yes I am trying all those recommendations given in CFX documentation. By now my only doubt is should I try with Steady state simulation or should I try Transient simulation because Steady state simulation is not converging?


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The steady state simulation should converge, providing there are no flow instabilities.

View either the velocity field or the RMS residuals when the simulation first shows signs of numerical instability.

Thanks for the suggestion ghorrocks.
The simulation is converged after reducing the Momentum source scaling factor, as given in the CFX documentation.
The default value of Momentum source scaling factor is 10.
Why it should be 10? Why we need to scale the Momentum source? Ideally it should be 1 rite?
The simulation is converging with ease when we use Momentum source scaling factor less than 1. All other initialization method like running first with Laminar condition, ramped speed increase, ramped outlet pressure increase has failed.
Now I am facing the 100% artificial wall problem at both end. Initially i thought, the length of inlet and outlet may be insufficient or the direction of rotation has some problem. But even after ensuring these two factors, i persistently facing artificial wall problem. However the simulation has converged. But when I check the mass flow rate at the outlet, it shows 0. Any suggestion?
Also the CFX documentation says that the initialization and stability can be used by using inside() function.
I created two Coordinate reference frame for the 2 gears. Now I want to specify the angular velocity of the fluid inside the gears using inside function with respect to the co-ordinate reference frame of the gears. Since there are 2 gears which rotates in opposite direction with each other, I need to create expression with reference to 2 co-ordinate frame. Any suggestion on how to do this?
for example,
to give initialization, for theta direction, in cyclindrical coordinate system, for the fluid fluid, i like to use
(inside()@Driven gear * angular velocity w.r.t Driven gear coordinate frame) + (inside()@Driving gear * angular velocity w.r.t Driving gear coordinate frame)
Any idea?
Thanks :)

This is all discussed in the documentation. Have you read it?

Use the post processor to check what the flow field looks like. Check it is behaving as you expected.

No I couldn't find why the momentum source scaling factor should be 10.

Yes I checked in the post processor and for some unknown reason flow was not coming out from Fluid volume in which the Immersed gears rotates. I changed the outlet boundary condition from static pressure to mass flow rate and now the artificial wall problem has solved.

Thanks for the suggestions ghorrocks


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s there any steady state solution for Gear pump simulation ?

A model for the prediction of the dynamic behaviour of an external gear pump is presented. We took into account the most important phenomena involved in the operation of this kind of machines. Fluid pressure distribution on gears, which is time-varying, is instantaneously computed and included as a resultant external force and torque acting on the gears.