CFD Simulation capability for Cyclone Separators

[Anonymous]

Hello Forum. 

I make this post to find out if Autodesk CFD can be used for the folowing: A simulation of the performance of a cyclone separator is required to determine its efficiency of separation of solid particles in an air stream.

Is this possible?

Aditional to this, if possible, the steps and example will be presented in the corresponding reply´s at this post. 

Best regards. 

[KubliJ]

Hi @Anonymous 

I've done a cyclone separator. They are nothing too different than any other flow analysis. The only difference in setup would be the use of SST k-omega RC (Smirnov-Menter)  turbulence model.

Checking the functionality of the particle removal is a little tricky. There is not going to be any sort of automatic calculation for you. But what you do is you use traces and you define particle size and mass. This will help visualize how the particulate will flow.

Here is a screenshot of my separator. I was designing it to remove saw dust. And in this run of the tracer, I was looking at the smallest particles. I have 37 traces on the inlet and about 17 make it out. A hand full of them flow into the collector at the bottom; the others simply go to zero velocity and stop. But you can assume that for the most part, those particles will slide down the inside of the separator and into the collector at the bottom.

I would recommend repeated trace sets with different sizes/mass and different placements of each size/mass on the inlet to get a picture of how well the separator is doing. One of the potential issues of traces is that it uses averaging of the flow field to determine the particle path, so mesh density and location of the particles can greatly affect the results.

How familiar are you with using Autodesk CFD?

Thanks,

James