CFD5 2005-06

Losses in pipe bends

2nd Exercise worth 40% of final assessment Due date 23 March 2006 @ 4pm
In any piping system there are energy losses due to expansions, contractions, valves, bends and, of course, friction from the walls of the pipe. The head loss, h, is normally given as a proportion of the kinetic energy of the flow, calculated from the mean velocity at the inlet, u1.

h=k

u12 2g

where k is the loss coefficient. If the diameter of the pipe varies, then the velocity at inlet and exit from the component will be different, but if the diameter is the same then, by continuity, the mean velocity and hence the kinetic energy will also be the same. In this case, only the pressure head loss needs to be taken into account and so

k=

2( p1 p2 ) u12

For the case of a pipe bend, the losses vary according to the sharpness of the bend, which is expressed as the ratio of the bend radius to the diameter, R/D.

Your project is to carry out a study of the loss coefficient of a particular combination of pipe diameter and radius and to investigate whether there is any variation in the coefficient with Reynolds number. 1) Create a 900 pipe bend in GAMBIT. This can be achieved by the following steps: a) make a torus of the correct dimensions b) use planes to split the torus into a 900 and a 2700 section c) delete the 2700 section

2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

d) create appropriate lengths of inlet pipe and outlet pipe by sweeping the end faces of the 900 section. Use water as the fluid and iron as the pipe wall material. For a Reynolds number of 10n, with n=5, find the pressure loss and hence the loss coefficient for this 900 pipe bend. Describe the flow profile as the fluid moves around the bend and how it differs from flow in a straight pipe. Run your simulation for the cases where n=2,3,4,6 and plot the variation of coefficient with Reynolds number on a log graph. Finally, for the case where n=3, does it make any difference to the behaviour of the flow around the bend and/or to the loss coefficient if the flow is swirling at the inlet?

The report should consist of 3 parts: 1) A 2-page summary of the problem and your findings. 2) A comprehensive section describing your approach to meshing, the reasoning behind your decisions on the inlet and outlet pipe lengths, what model(s) you used, how you achieved convergence and so on. 3) An appendix of information such as tables, figures, contour plots, vector plots and xy plots. Remember that you will be marked, not only on the values you obtain, but also on your analysis of the problem and your interpretation of your results. It is very important to carefully explain all of the decisions which you make. The final Fluent case and data files should be kept for inspection in a folder called PipeBend until you are told they may be deleted. WJE 22 Feb 2006

Name Andrews Ceccarelli Chapman de Mora Edward Edwards Findlay Ge Gkardiakos Hamilton Hanna Henderson Ip Kuner Magowan Makridis McMullen Millar Moore Neish Rankin Rankine Ross Symiakos Vaughan Wisniewski

Pipe diameter(mm) 100 100 100 225 100 125 125 125 125 150 150 150 150 175 175 175 175 175 200 200 200 200 200 200 225 225

Bend radius(mm) 100 150 200 400 250 150 200 250 300 150 200 250 300 200 250 300 350 400 200 250 300 350 400 450 300 350