Modeling Flow through Closed Loop System
 

Greetings;

I am trying to model fluid flow through a closed loop system. A pump circulates the fluid in the loop. In such problem, there is no inlet and outlet but the mass flow rate is known.

Could you please advise on how to tackle this problem? Or any way around it to have it solved. Thanks in advance!

Break the loop and there you have an inlet and an outlet. The inlet and outlet should have BC's that will complete your loop

Regards
Luke

Thanks for your reply Luke.

The only problem I see to break the loop is How to match its inlet and outlet velocity and temperature over the time. I heared that "periodic boundary condition" might be useful but I don't know much about it. Please advise.

Попробуйте выполнить этот пример из справки пользователя FLUENT
Try this tutorial
http://jullio.pe.kr/fluent6.1/help/html/tg/node23.htm

Hi Mike,
Could you post a picture of the model
Regards
Luke

Similar problem (2 possible solutions)
 

I am working on similar problem, a closed loop with heat generation. I want to track how the temperature in the loop changes over time.

The two ideas I have are involve breaking the loop into several zones so that I have at least 1 straight section of pipe. I then either:

1) Use a momentum source term

2) Use a fixed velocity term

on the straight section of pipe.

This works to an extent (I get continuous and flow through the loop in one direction). however, a momentum source term is difficult to use to control the velocity and for some reason the velocity in the loop is not equal to what i set as the fixed term. very odd

Any tips would be much appreciated.