02/06/2016 SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation—Turbomachinery ­ Engineers Rule

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SOLIDWORKS Flow
Simulation—
Turbomachinery

Attilio Colangelo | Comments | May 13, 2016

SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation can evaluate the uid ow for various

engineering applications and can facilitate thermal analysis for solving various
heat transfer problems. While the software is capable of analyzing a variety of
solid bodies and uid con gurations, the solutions are typically characterized by
ow in or around stationary solid bodies.

However, there is another feature of the Flow Simulation toolset that can assist in
evaluating uids interacting with mechanisms in motion, useful for assessing the
design and performance of turbomachinery. This involves specifying rotation of
the uid and solid bodies within the computational domain. This article looks at
applying these concepts to a pump design.

Pump Model

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Consider the pump shown in Figure 1. The motor rotates the impeller at high
speed, creating a vacuum to generate suction at the inlet. Pumps and most
turbomachinery operate by converting power in the form of an electric motor (P2
in the diagram below) to uid power in the form of pressure and ow.

Figure 1 . Typical pump diagram.

The operating parameters we will simulate are as follows:

Flow rate 0.3 m3/s

Outlet pressure Ambient

Pump rpm 2,000 rpm (209.5 radians/second)

Inlet pressure To be calculated from the analysis

A SOLIDWORKS solid model representation of the pump internals is shown in

Figure 2 below.

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Figure 2. Pump solid model.

A key parameter in simulating turbomachinery is identifying the rotating

components in the model and using boundary conditions to specify stationary
components. As with many Flow Simulation problems, the Wizard option gives a
good starting point for setting all the major options. The Wizard starts with the
dialog box in Figure 3. Here we name the project and add any comments.

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Figure 3. Wizard start dialog box.

The next dialog box is for specifying units. For this example, we will perform the
analysis using SI units.

Figure 4 is the rst dialog box that allows us to indicate that some of the
components in the solid model will be rotating during operation. We activate the
Rotation feature and select “Global rotating” from the dropdown.

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Figure 4. Specifying rotation.

We set the angular velocity to 2,000 rpm (209.5 radians/second) about the Z-axis.
Since we have set a global rotation, all components are considered rotating with
the speci ed angular velocity. We will specify the stationary components later in
the analysis setup.

The uid that we are pumping is air, and we add it to the Project Fluids de nition
as shown in Figure 5.

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Figure 5. Adding air to the project.

All other dialog options in the Wizard can be left at the default.

To ensure the geometry is modeled correctly for the Flow Simulation to continue,
a model check is performed (Tools → Flow Simulation → Tools → Check
Geometry). With the Show Fluid option of the geometry check activated, we get
the display as shown in Figure 6. The air can be seen contouring the blades of the
impeller.

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Figure 6. Air volume.

Boundary Conditions
The pump will be required to produce a ow of 0.3 m3/s. We will de ne this
boundary condition at the inlet lid face of the model as shown in Figure 7.

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Figure 7. Specifying inlet ow.

The outlet is de ned on the outlet lid surface as shown in Figure 8 by setting the
Environment Pressure to ambient (10,325 kPa) on this surface.

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Figure 8. Specifying the outlet conditions.

The nal boundary condition is the most critical. Recall that we speci ed a global
rotation of 2,000 rpm in the model setup. This will, by default, impart a rotation on
all of the uid and solid components. We need to make the pump housing
stationary to mimic the actual operation of the equipment. From the boundary
condition dialog box (Tools → Flow Simulation → Insert → Boundary Condition),
we select the pump casing as the stationary item (see Figure 9).

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Figure 9. Fixing the nonmoving components.

We are now ready to solve the model by selecting Tools → Flow Simulation →
Solve → Run from the menu.

Post-Processing
The function of a pump is to drive a given ow from a lower pressure to a higher
pressure using energy from an attached motor. The pump in our example uses a
motor to drive the impeller (Figure 1), which pulls suction on the inlet (Ps). We will

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evaluate the pressure drop by querying surface results at the inlet and outlet
surfaces.

Figure 10. Flow Simulation menu tree.

Right-clicking the Surface Parameters in Figure 10 brings up the dialog box in

Figure 11. We are interested in the inlet pressure since that will give the amount
of vacuum the pump must draw to move the speci ed 0.3 m3/s of air.

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Figure 11. Getting inlet pressure results.

To calculate the inlet pressure, the inner surface of the inlet lid is selected as the
reference geometry, and we select “Pressure” as the required quantity. The
average pressure over that face is 100.4 kPa, as shown in Figure 12. This is a
vacuum relative to the speci ed 101.3-kPa ambient pressure.

Figure 12. Inlet pressure results.

The power input from the motor required to pump that amount of air is
determined by the following calculation:
Power (Watt) = Torque(N-m) × Angular Velocity (radians/second)
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The torque on the impeller is determined by again bringing up a Surface

Parameters dialog box similar to Figure 11. However, in this case, we select all the
faces of the impeller for the Selection box and select “Torque” for the parameter to
display (Figure 13).

Figure 13. Getting impeller torque.

The results are shown in Figure 14.

Figure 14. Impeller torque.

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Plugging the results into the previous formula relating power to torque and rpm,
we have:

Power = 1.507 (N-m) * 209.5 radians/second = 315.7 Watts

Another useful insight to the design of a pump impeller is the ef ciency. As shown
in Figure 14, Flow Simulation can extract the contribution to the torque
requirements between the normal and friction force on the blades. Modifying the
blade pro le will affect the ratio of the components to the overall torque. This will
impact the pump ef ciency, which is de ned as the power output to the air stream
relative to the power input by the pump motor to the impeller. The power in the
pressurized air stream is the pressure rise multiplied by ow:

Air Power = Pressure Rise × Flow = (101,325–100,424) Pa × 0.3 m³/s = 270.3

Watts

The pump ef ciency is de ned as the air power divided by the power delivered to
the impeller. The overall ef ciency of the pump in our simulation is then
270.3/315.7 = 85.6 percent.

Visualizing Results
The air ow pattern within the impeller can be visualized by selecting “Flow
Trajectories” from the Results menu. This brings up the dialog box in Figure 15.

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Figure 15. De ning ow trajectories.

Selecting the outer lid as the reference surface and specifying velocity for the
parameter to plot, we get the ow trajectories from the pump inlet through the
impeller as shown in Figure 16.

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Figure 16. Flow trajectory plot.

Parametric Analysis
The previous Flow Simulation was modeled by specifying a global rotation in the
settings and then selecting the stationary surfaces (stators) by applying the
appropriate boundary conditions. This makes determining the effect of increasing
the rotational speed on the pump performance very easy. We will increase this
global rpm by 50 percent from 2,000 to 3,000 (314 radians/second) and rerun the
analysis.

The simulation with these parameters gives the following results:

Impeller Torque = 2.88 N-m

Power = 2.88 (N-m) * 314 radians/second = 904.3 Watts

Pressure Rise = 101,325–99,124 Pa = 2201 Pa

Air Power = Pressure Rise × Flow = 2201 Pa × 0.3 m³/s = 660.3 Watts

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The ef ciency in this case is 660/904 (73 percent) compared to the previously
calculated 85.6 percent for the 2,000-rpm base case.

Conclusion
SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation can assist in the design and analysis of various
types of turbomachinery (fans, pumps and turbines). In this article, we analyzed an
air pump and set up boundary conditions to simulate a speci ed air ow rate and
determine the power required to achieve that performance. Overall pump
ef ciency was determined by calculating the delivered power to the impeller
versus the power in the outlet air stream.

About the Author

Attilio Colangelo has more than 25 years of experience in engineering and project
management in the chemical, process, ceramic and advanced-materials industries.
His specialties include CAE, with an emphasis on FEA, high-temperature and
heavy industrial design. His software skills include SOLIDWORKS Simulation,
NASTRAN, Caesar II, ANSYS and iOS programming.

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