[t8fanning]

I have completed a simulation of an axial flow inducer using CRUNCH CFD and am trying to calculate mass flows at various points in the computational domain. From what I've seen, the surface flow filter should perform this operation. However it has not worked for me.

I have created a slice near the inlet of the domain where the mass flow is constrained to a known 13.6 kg/s. When I extract the slice and use the surface flow filter, a value of -0.19488 is returned. I've also tried generating surface normals from the extracted surface and using the calculator to do the dot product of the generated normals and velocity, after which I use the integrate variables filter. This returns a value of 0.19488 in the axial direction. So both methods are returning results an order of magnitude small.

Any ideas what is wrong with my approach? I'm very new to Paraview, but all the forum posts asking about mass flow calculations have pointed to one of the two methods I've tried. Thanks.

Here is an image of my computational domain:



Here is the slice I made:

[Swempa]

Originally Posted by t8fanning

I have completed a simulation of an axial flow inducer using CRUNCH CFD and am trying to calculate mass flows at various points in the computational domain. From what I've seen, the surface flow filter should perform this operation. However it has not worked for me.

I have created a slice near the inlet of the domain where the mass flow is constrained to a known 13.6 kg/s. When I extract the slice and use the surface flow filter, a value of -0.19488 is returned. I've also tried generating surface normals from the extracted surface and using the calculator to do the dot product of the generated normals and velocity, after which I use the integrate variables filter. This returns a value of 0.19488 in the axial direction. So both methods are returning results an order of magnitude small.

Any ideas what is wrong with my approach? I'm very new to Paraview, but all the forum posts asking about mass flow calculations have pointed to one of the two methods I've tried. Thanks.

Hi Tate,

If i understand you correct are you aiming on calculating the mass flow, and then i would say your approach seems to be correct.

What you have calculated when applying the "integrate variables filter" on velocity data is a volumetric flow (m³/s). What i would recommend you to test is to apply a "calculator filter" on this "integrate variables filter", where you multiply your volumetric flow with the density.

Now i dont know what type of fluid and which density you are running, but its not clear how 13.6 kg/s and 0.19488 m³/s can be connected with the more standard fluids (rho=70 kg/m³), so maybe there is another issue also.
What you then can test is to calculate the normal velocity on the "slice" with a "calculator" filter, and then apply the "integrate variables filter" on this value.

Good luck and hope that this will fix your issue.

Cheers