Flow Conditioner by Perforated Plate: Paper Validation

Description

Flow Conditioner by Perforated Plate CFD Simulation by ANSYS Fluent : Paper Validation

Project Description

This project involved CFD validation of a perforated plate flow conditioner against experimental data from Spearman et al(Comparison of velocity and turbulence profiles downstream of perforated plate flow conditioners
perforated plate). The study aimed to validate numerical simulation results for flow conditioning performance downstream of flow-disturbing installations. The validation focused on analyzing velocity and pressure profiles to assess how effectively the CFD model captures the flow development characteristics observed in laboratory experiments, which is crucial for industrial flow measurement applications.

Geometry and Mesh

The computational geometry was created using ANSYS SpaceClaim with dimensions of 4,822.2 × 102.6 × 205.2 mm, representing a pipe section with an integrated perforated plate flow conditioner. The perforated plate contained multiple holes arranged in concentric patterns to provide graded resistance across the flow cross-section. The computational mesh was generated using ANSYS Meshing, resulting in 583,842 tetrahedral elements with appropriate refinement around the perforated plate holes and near-wall regions to accurately capture complex flow phenomena.

Setup

The CFD simulation used a pressure-based solver with steady-state conditions and gravity enabled at -9.81 m/s². Water was specified as the working fluid material. The k-epsilon standard turbulence model was employed to capture turbulence effects downstream of the perforated plate. Boundary conditions included velocity inlet with profile specification and pressure outlet. The SIMPLE algorithm was used for pressure-velocity coupling to ensure proper solution convergence and accuracy in predicting flow development characteristics.

Results

The simulation results demonstrated good agreement with experimental findings regarding velocity and pressure profile development downstream of the flow conditioner. The velocity contours showed characteristic jet formation through perforated holes and subsequent mixing, with flow approaching developed conditions at 3D downstream, consistent with experimental observations. The pressure distribution results showed the expected pressure drop across the perforated plate and subsequent recovery downstream. As noted in the reference material, dimensionless velocity values showed minimal variation at different downstream distances, with differences typically less than 5-10% between locations, validating the CFD methodology for flow conditioner design applications.

Also, the error values ​​are shown in the table below: