RANS ANALYSIS OF FLOWS THROUGH AN OPEN-CENTERED SWIRL GENERATOR COMBINED WITH A 90-DEGREE PIPE ELBOW

The effect of the open-centered swirl generator (SG) on the flow in a pipe elbow was investigated. Steady RANS analysis with the shear stress transport (SST) model was performed to obtain flow fields using commercial CFD software. The working fluid and the bulk velocity were set to air and 1 m/s, respectively. When the SG of this study was installed downstream of the elbow, the maximum velocity region after the elbow was quickly guided to the center of the pipe and generated an axial swirl. Instead, the pressure drop increased due to the flow resistance compared to the case without the SG. Depending on the location of the SG, the difference in the flow field was shown as a result of the interaction with the flow passing through the elbow. Among the three locations considered in this study, the flow resistance was minimized when the SG was installed upstream. When the SG was installed downstream, both the vortex and the TKE were predicted to be the maximum.