COMPARISON OF FLOW ANALYSIS OF A SUDDEN AND GRADUAL CHANGE OF PIPE DIAMETER USING FLUENT SOFTWARE

Abstract

This paper describes an analytical approach to describe the areas where Pipes (used for flow of fluids) are mostly susceptible to damage and tries to visualize the flow behaviour in various geometric conditions of a pipe. Fluent software was used to plot the characteristics of the flow and gambit software was used to design the 2D model. Two phase Computational fluid dynamics calculations, using K-epsilon model were employed. This simulation gives the values of pressure and velocity contours at various sections of the pipe in which water as a media. A comparison was made with the sudden and gradual change of pipe diameter (i.e., expansion and contraction of the pipe). The numerical results were validated against experimental data from the literature and were found to be in good agreement.