Vacuum pump simulation

Alasdair

Hi

I have limited knowledge of CFD, so sorry if the following is a "dumb" question.

I am trying to help a company identify potential applications for CFD in their design and development activities. They have recently moved into vacuum pumps (the rotary vane, positive displacement variety, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_vane_pump) and want to know if a CFD package will be able to model this accurately.

It is the transient behaviour after first starting the pump which is of interest - i.e. what is the vaccum generated after 5, 10, 20 seconds and so on. This differs from the static (e.g. valve) or steady-state (e.g. centrifugal impeller) analyses I have seen before in CFD.

Is this type of analysis possible in CFD, and is it do-able on one of the CAD-integrated low-end packages (specifically EFD.Pro, STAR-ProE or CFDesign) which we are considering?

Any help/advice much appreciated.

Thanks

Alasdair