Hello Everyone, currently I am working on a CFD simulation of laminar Multiphase flow through a porous filter made of Borosilicate glass fibres and resin. This filter is used in Vacuum pump for separation of oil from air. Looking at so many softwares, I am confused on which one to use. I own a Solidworks license hence I would be happy if I could use simulation in solidworks itself.
You can use the Solidworks Flow Simulation module to simulate the flow through porous media:
http://www.solidworks.com/sw/products/simulation/flow-simulation.htm
There are video tutorials on youtube.com on carrying out this type of simulations.
If you don't have the licence for this module, you can use open source tools, like OpenFOAM (e.g. using the porousSimpleFoam solver, which is a basic one for flows through porous media).
This is a quite complex problem to handle via CFD since, as I understand, you pretend to capture the oil in the air passing the filter. It means, besides my recommendation for complex multiphase problems is typically ANSYS-CFD or similar workbenches, you´ll need to play carefully with the setup to make it possible to enforce continuity on air, while liquid accumulates in the porous medium. Also, the permeability will change in time as the porous medium saturates with oil.
Since your problem looks at first sight as a engineering problem, more than a scientific challenge, my recommendation, due to the simplicity of the macroscopic problem and the complexity of the microscopic phenomenon is:
To set-up an experimental rig and run different cases to figure out the behavior of the filter. It will be very simple and economic to set up and examine, unless you really need to develop the phenomenon of porous saturation and separation of phases (which in this case will require large effort in serious CFD tools), don´t forget the full-experimental path as a valid alternative when CFD is not really economic.
Dear all, an experimental setup is highly recommended for this kind of problem. The use of ANSYS is typical but non economic if you don't have a licence yet. Open source like OpenFOAM is a valid alternative to obtain a preliminary result but pay attention on boundary conditions because convergence issues may occur.
The follow two open-sources could help you complete the problem without any licence.
1.SU2
http://su2.stanford.edu/
2.MFIX
https://mfix.netl.doe.gov/
Dear Luis Rojas-Solorzano,
I already have Experimental data with me and I am looking forward to obtain data from computation so that I can compare both of them. I already have Solidworks and thence I am quite keen on running simulation through Solidworks. However, I doubt the capability of Solidworks for simulating flow through a porous filter.
- Badges
- Science topic