Hi,
Can anyone kindly advise me how to set goals to measure flow rate through each pipe as circulated in below image?
For instance, how to measure flow rate inside a hollow pipe without generating perpendicular lid/surface.
Thank you very much.
Hi Randika,
To measure the flows from the outlet of each tank you would need to create lids (cylindrical extrusions) covering each of the outlets you wish to measure. You would then go to the 'Input Data' folder of your Flow Project, right click it, go to 'Component Control' and disable these lids from being used as solids in your calculation. The lid bodies can now be used to measure the flow through those volumes. You can assign goals to the lid faces/volumes or use 'Volume Parameters' to take measurements from those areas/volumes after the calculation completes. The final setup looks somewhat like this:
I've also attached the test model I made if you want to look through that as well.
Many thanks, Ryan. It works perfectly well.
By the way, as you can see in below image, the flow trajectories don't run through the whole system. My inlet flow rate is 20 mm^3/s and exit is at 1 atm. I have considered gravity in -Y direction. Further, I have optimized the inlet and outlet manifolds taper such that the flow rate through every tube is approximately 5 mm^3/s using the method you have explained above. A line of advice to sort this issue is highly appreciated. Sorry for the trouble as I'm quite new to fluid dynamics and SolidWorks Flow.
Cheers.
Randika,
Looking at how the flow trajectories you have generated don't even completely go through the system and out the exit you may have some kind of bug on your hands. I don't see any specific open SPRs so I suspect there are some specific settings in your flow trajectory definition leading to this behavior. My own flow trajectory plot does not seem to have any issue completing here in 2017 SP3.0 (the version I was using to make that example model) which is shown below.
One thing you may wish to do is also select the outlet lid face for the definition of your flow trajectories as these may help show a more complete picture of the flow trajectories.
Thanks, Ryan. Unfortunately, I'm unable to open your model as the version in installed in my PC is 2015. How many surfaces did you select to generate that trajectory? only inlet lid?
I have selected inlet, outlet and four intermediate lids created to measure flow rate and below is what I got. Do you suspect as this is something to do with PC performance? The computer I'm using an office desktop with 8GB RAM.
Randika,
This plot was generated off of just selecting the inlet face but this is a couple versions ahead of yours. I do recall some issues with flow trajectory generation in the recent releases but nothing specific off the top of my head. I think it required a code fix ultimately.
I doubt that it is an issue with the hardware of the computer itself. If you want to link the models over I can run it in 2017 and see if they behave any better there. That doesn't fix your immediate issue but would be good to know so you don't spin your wheels too much on this.
Your path forward may be to use a cut plot on your section with ''Stream Lines' enabled. These can give a good idea of the flow behavior in your project.
Hi Ryan,
Attached is my model. Please run on your PC and let me know the outcome.
At least it will help to verify whether I have configured flow trajectories and other boundary conditions correctly.
Thanks.
Randika,
When I run your Flow Simulation on my end this is the flow trajectory it produces with only the flow inlet selected.
It looks like you are having an issue specific to the version you are in today.
Many thanks, Ryan.
At least now I know it is not something to do with my trajectory configuration but with SW itself.
I am not a flow guy....but wouldn't something like this get you more symmetrical flow into each tank?
(just an example):
