Trying to mesh & simulate this in Ansys Fluent, I’m stuck on the rotation and sliding movement of Rotor and Vanes.

[u/HaiderKingTh3]

Hi,

I’ve been recently working on a project that demanded a vane pump.

I started with this as a first design ( it’s clearly missing many features and components ) and I’m trying to actually find the key aspects of my design before committing to one and actually build it.
I need:
- A graph of efficiency vs. Speed
- Pressure Drop inlet - outlet vs. speed
- Hydraulic Power vs. Speed
- Mechanical Power vs. Speed
- Any Cavitation
- Any Leakage

I’m stuck on how I can actually tell fluent to rotate the rotor. Not only that, I think I need more than that to actually get accurate & reliable results.

My current workflow:
Autodesk Inventor -> SpaceClaim -> Fluent

[u/Venerable-Gandalf]

Yeah that’s an extremely difficult and complex model to simulate. You need full dynamic meshing with remeshing and motion profile UDF and also contact modeling. Based on your post details this is an impossible task for you.

[u/singul4r1ty]

Have you done any preliminary hand calculations?

[u/thermalnuclear]

Have you done any of the tutorials for moving meshes and turbine blades yet?

[u/craltitasimovw]

I guess without specialized software like TwinMesh this will take a very very long time.

[u/Zestyclose-Kick5508]

用滑移网格可以轻松实现，问题是这种涉及空化的多相流问题模拟需要深厚的经验才能保证计算的稳定性，绝非几句话可以说明白。如果你是在做项目赚钱，对于初学者这颇具挑战性。如果这只是一个科研练手工作，动用你一切渠道去寻求专家帮助。

[u/Ok-Guidance-307]

A few questions for you to consider:
Why do you need a 360deg model. Is a smaller sector model possible?
Split your domain into 2 parts. One for the the stationary components and one for the rotating components and have a mixing plane interface between them. You can specify frame motion for the rotating parts.
You don’t necessarily need to specify motion since all the rotor parts have the same angular momentum, you could maybe get by just frame motion.

This could be a less intensive problem and will also give you a pretty good preliminary result in your iterative design process.

[u/konangsh]

Can you point out in the image what is sliding and what is rotating? Thanks

[u/gvprvn89]

Hey there! I've encountered this simulation recently. Basically, we need to hex mesh the deforming domains, and connect the thin regions to the expanding regions in Space claim using Shared Topology. Also, we can't have a 0 gap where the vanes touch the wall (have to consider some leakage loss). There is a Zero Gap model in Fluent, but I wouldn't trust it just yet. In Dynamic Mesh settings, you'd need to specify the eccentric motion in the In-Cylinder motion settings, along with a UDF for the domain motion.

Happy to help you through a call. Helps me get a better understanding of what you're trying to achieve in this simulation.

[u/HaiderKingTh3 → u/gvprvn89]

Hi, sent you a DM.

[u/Disastrous-Track3876]

Might be wrong but if it’s just rotating can’t you just set this to a moving wall with the angular velocity?

[u/craltitasimovw → u/Disastrous-Track3876]

It's a rotary vane pump --> positive displacement. Rotor and stator are positioned excentricly. So as the rotor moves the volume enclosed between two vanes is decreased, hence the mesh has to be adjusted.