SolidWorks Flow Simulation: Internal Variable Velocity Inlet Boundary Condition

     This post is about an internal computational fluid dynamics simulation. The Simulation was performed in a pipe with a diameter of 1 in. The length of the inlet was 8 in away from the intersection. The two outlets were 4 in away from the intersection and were at an angle of 120° from the inlet, respectively. The flow entered the pipe in pulses with a period of 0.2 s. The peak velocity was at 2 m/s and the minimum velocity was kept at 0 m/s. This simulation setup can be analogous to the opening/closing of an IC engine valve simulation or simulation of cardiovascular systems etc.

     The part used in the simulation and the simulation setup is available here, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1, Part geometry.

 

     The mesh is shown in Fig. 2. The simulation assumed 2D simplification, to save time and computational resources. The mesh had a total of 15,512 cells. A simulation time step of 0.00625 s was employed.

 

Fig. 2, The computational mesh.

 

     The velocity profile at 0.9 s is shown in Fig. 3.

 

Fig. 3, Velocity Streamlines colored by velocity magnitude, superimposed by velocity vectors.

 

     An animation of the results is shown below. The results are, indeed, mesh and time independent.

 

 

     Thank you for reading. Reach out to collaborate in research projects.