Twin Screw Extruder CFD Simulation, Using DEM and Dynamic Mesh
Price: $108
- In this project, a twin screw extruder is simulated using ANSYS Fluent to analyze the interaction of water and particles within the system.
- The flow rate of particles is nine times that of the continuous phase, and both the interactions within the particle phase and with the continuous phase are considered using a 4-way DEM module.
- The geometry is designed in ANSYS SpaceClaim, and an unstructured mesh is generated in ANSYS Meshing with dynamic adjustments at each time step.
- The k-epsilon turbulence model and DPM model are employed along with the DEM module to simulate interactions.
- This complex simulation, involving dynamic meshing and high computational demands, reveals insights into particle tracking and residence time as the extruder operates at 300 rpm with a 60-degree rotation scope.
Twin Screw Extruder CFD Simulation, Using DEM and Dynamic Mesh
Price: $108
- In this project, a twin screw extruder is simulated using ANSYS Fluent to analyze the interaction of water and particles within the system.
- The flow rate of particles is nine times that of the continuous phase, and both the interactions within the particle phase and with the continuous phase are considered using a 4-way DEM module.
- The geometry is designed in ANSYS SpaceClaim, and an unstructured mesh is generated in ANSYS Meshing with dynamic adjustments at each time step.
- The k-epsilon turbulence model and DPM model are employed along with the DEM module to simulate interactions.
- This complex simulation, involving dynamic meshing and high computational demands, reveals insights into particle tracking and residence time as the extruder operates at 300 rpm with a 60-degree rotation scope.
Twin Screw Extruder CFD Simulation, Using DEM and Dynamic Mesh, by ANSYS Fluent
Project Description
In this project, we aim to simulate a twin screw extruder using ANSYS Fluent software. The water flows from the inlet with a specific flow rate while carrying particles. The flow rate of the particles is 9 times higher than the continuous phase. Moreover, the mutual interaction between the continuous phase and discrete phase and also the interaction between the discrete phase itself is taken into account. In other words, the simulation was performed using a 4-way DEM module. Note that, the screw extruder is rotating with a constant rotational velocity of 300rpm.
Geometry and Mesh
The geometry of the twin screw extruder is designed using ANSYS SpaceClaim software. Next, the created model is transferred to ANSYS meshing software in order to generate an unstructured grid. It is worth mentioning that, the number of elements doesn`t remain constant and it is altering with each time step.
Methodology
The Dynamic Mesh module is activated with smoothing and remeshing sub-models In order to generate or modify the mesh grid in each time step while the twin screw is rotating with a constant rotational velocity. The k-epsilon standard turbulence model is used. In addition, the DPM model is employed to model the discrete phase known as CaCo3 particles. As mentioned in the previous section, the DEM module (4-way) is activated to consider all kinds of interaction.
Results
The computational cost of the twin screw simulation is extremely high regarding the DEM and dynamic mesh. The initial mesh grid was established from 2.2milmeter tetrahedron cells but it was changed continuously during the calculations. The time step size plays a prominent role in simulation convergence because as you use an inappropriate time step size, the solution leads to divergence due to negative volume cell detection.
After the simulation process, the particle tracking was extracted as shown in the figure. Note that, the twin screw was covered by 60-degree rotation. In the following, the particle's residence time contours are shown from different views.