Numerical flow analysis of [a] gear pump /

Abstract

The objective of this study was to develop a numerical solution method for flow analysis of a gear pump with various boundary conditions and rotational speeds of gears. Flow variable contours and plots were obtained for fluid flow inside a gear pump subject to pressure inlet and pressure outlet conditions using the numerical control volume method in the commercial package FLUENT. Gears with different magnitudes of pressure outlets and rotational speeds were analyzed. Currently, no solutions that report the numerical turbulent flow analysis of gear pumps are available in the literature. It is important to the design engineer that accurate methods are available to determine various flow parameters such as pressure, velocity, turbulence, flow rate etc. for the flow analysis of the gear pump. The method developed in this work was compared with the general data of P3l5 external gear pump manufactured by Parker Hannifin Corporation, as a validation of the numerical model. An engineer will be able to use the solution method developed in this work for the analysis of flow parameters inside a gear pump in order to achieve its optimum design. Another benefit of this work is to demonstrate to practicing engineers that FLUENT has the capability of solving turbulent flow analysis of gear pumps by using its Moving Dynamic Mesh method. Students can follow this thesis to solve the dynamic mesh problem step by step. This work should be considered a small subset of numerical analysis of flow in gear pumps. It is expected that the results presented in this research provide important information for the extension to a three dimensional analysis of a similar problem.