Quantitative Assessment of Secondary Flows of Single-phase Fluid through Pipe Bends

Z. Kaldy [1], O. Ayala [1],
[1] Department of Engineering Technology, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA
Published in 2016

Single-phase fluid flow was simulated passing through various three dimensional pipe elbows. The simulations varied by Reynolds number, curvature ratios, and sweep angles and were all conducted using the k-ε model available in COMSOL Multiphysics® software. The intent of this research was to qualitatively assess the flow characteristics under several different conditions. Many similarities were seen especially when comparing curvature ratios, the vorticity location for the turbulent cases show near identical behavior at the elbow midsection. One of the variables quantified in this paper is the maximum secondary velocity module which shows increasing values until the midsection of the elbow.