Estimating the Power Requirement of a Rushton Turbine Using Pointwise and OpenFOAM

Presenters Darrin Stephens

Dr. Stephens has an extensive background in modeling a range of complex reacting multi-phase flows and led the development of CFD models for a number of industrial unit processes allowing re-design and optimization, improving throughput and efficiencies. He is the managing director and principle research engineer at Applied CCM Pty Ltd., a company providing development, technical support and training for the open source CFD software OpenFOAM. Applied CCM has been a distributor of Pointwise since 2011. Dr. Stephens' professional interests include optimization and optimization algorithms, population balance modeling, coupled solvers and the development of next-generation hybrid and multi-physics models. He earned his mechanical engineering B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia.

Travis Carrigan Travis Carrigan joined Pointwise as a senior engineer after completing his M.S. in aerospace engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington in May 2011 where his graduate research involved aerodynamic design optimization. He interned at Pointwise beginning May 2008, producing demonstration and application videos and working in technical support, doing grid projects and quality assurance testing. During a prior internship at Vought Aircraft Industries, Mr. Carrigan worked as a quality engineer on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner Program. As a senior engineer at Pointwise, Mr. Carrigan works with clients to strengthen their CFD processes by developing interactive and automated meshing solutions.

Tank and Impeller Geometry

T=1m D= T/3 N=180 rpm

Adjusting patch definitions

Default definition of cyclic patch from Pointwise

Adjusting patch definitions cont’d

Set BC and initial conditions

• Pressure – All walls – zeroGradient

– Cyclics – cyclicAMI

• Velocity – All walls (except top

and shaft-st) – fixedValue (0 0 0)

– top – slip

– shaft-st – rotating wall velocity

– Cyclics – cyclicAMI

• Turbulenct kinetic energy – All walls – kqRWallFunction

– Cyclics – cyclicAMI

• Turbulent eddy dissipation – All walls – epsilonWallFunction

– Cyclics – cyclicAMI

• Kinematic turbulent viscosity – All walls – nutkWallFunction

– Cyclics - cyclicAMI

checkMesh

checkMesh cont’d

Check geometry size

Check aspect ratio

Check non-orthogonality (visual inspection if required)

Check skewness

renumberMesh

renumberMesh cont’d

Method is runtime selectable in 2.2.x

Create new copy. Can overwrite if necessary

Large bandwidth reduction

fvOptions

cellZone defined in Pointwise

Cyclics are non-rotating

fvSchemes

fvSolution

controlDict

Results

Results

Results

Results

Results

Thank-you for attending our webinar

The grid files and geometries used in this webinar as well as the recorded video of the webinar will be available on our web site tomorrow.

www.pointwise.com/webinar

If you have any questions about Pointwise, please email Travis Carrigan at webinar@pointwise.com.

If you have any questions about Applied CCM technology and services, please email Darrin Stephens at d.stephens@appliedccm.com.au.

Extra slides

Set BC and initial conditions

Set BC and initial conditions cont’d

Set BC and initial conditions cont’d

Set BC and initial conditions cont’d

Set BC and initial conditions cont’d

Turbulence and Transport