Development of Design Support System for Piping Route and Differential Pressure Flowmeter by Three-Dimensional Fluid Analysis

In power plants that becoming more compact, it will expend much time and effort to satisfy the requirement for the differential pressure flow measurement according to ISO’s standards. Therefore, it is difficult for engineers in the design phase to completely remove the potential for large errors in flow measurement. This paper presents the 3D fluid analysis system that is a lower cost than the conventional method to confirm the soundness of such measurement in the phase of piping route design. This system has the function to automatically generate the analysis models from general 3D piping CAD data. The analysis program is written by the open source code to reduce a license fee. Also, this system has the function of calculating the swirl strength along the pipe axis as one of the means for efficiently supporting the design change. In order to verify and validate the analysis system, we analyzed several flow paths, confirmed the response of the swirl strength and flow rate indication value of the differential pressure flowmeter model. The analysis result well simulated the increase or decrease swirl strength in the complex flow path, and fluctuation of the flow rate indication value. Also, the system supports to set the flowmeter in the appropriate position by providing visualization of the swirl strength along the pipe axis. In the flow path analysis in this validation, it took about one month to visualization of the swirl strength along the pipe axis from the generation of the analysis models. The 3D fluid analysis system collaborative with 3D piping CAD design system has been developed. This system enable to confirm the effects of swirl strength on flow measurement and the soundness of the differential pressure flow measurement at a lower cost in comparison with conventional method.