Developer(s) | Simerics |
---|---|
Stable release | V.3.0 / 2011 |
Operating system | Cross-platform |
Type | Computational Fluid Dynamics Software |
License | Proprietary |
Website | PumpLinx Software |
PumpLinx is a 3-D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software developed for the analysis of fluid pumps, motors, compressors, valves, propellers, hydraulic systems and other fluid devices with rotating or sliding components.
The software imports 3-D geometry from CAD data in the form of STL files. [1] It has geometry Conformal Adaptive Binary-Tree mesh generation tool which creates 3-D grid from CAD surfaces. For liquid devices, PumpLinx has a cavitation model to account for the effect of liquid vapor, free/dissolved gas, and liquid compressibility.
PumpLinx provides templates for different categories of devices, including: axial piston pumps, centrifugal pumps, gerotors, gear pumps, progressive cavity pumps, propellers, radial piston pumps, rotary vane pumps, submersible pumps, and valves.
Those templates create an initial grid for special rotors; for example, grids around gears of a gear pump, and then re-meshes the grid for a moving simulation, and provide device specific input and output. The output from the code include velocities, pressures, temperatures, and gas volume fractions of the flow field, together with integrated engineering data such as loads and torques.
PumpLinx uses a single Graphical User Interface (GUI) for grid generation, model set-up, execution, and post processing.
The software is used primarily by component and system engineers in the automotive, [2] hydraulic, [3] and aerospace industry as a virtual test-bed to study efficiency, cavitation, pressure ripple, and noise for hydrodynamic pumps, [4] and fluid power equipment.
Cavitation is a phenomenon in which rapid changes of pressure in a liquid lead to the formation of small vapor-filled cavities, in places where the pressure is relatively low.
A pump is a device that moves fluids, or sometimes slurries, by mechanical action. Pumps can be classified into three major groups according to the method they use to move the fluid: direct lift, displacement, and gravity pumps.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate the free-stream flow of the fluid, and the interaction of the fluid with surfaces defined by boundary conditions. With high-speed supercomputers, better solutions can be achieved, and are often required to solve the largest and most complex problems. Ongoing research yields software that improves the accuracy and speed of complex simulation scenarios such as transonic or turbulent flows. Initial validation of such software is typically performed using experimental apparatus such as wind tunnels. In addition, previously performed analytical or empirical analysis of a particular problem can be used for comparison. A final validation is often performed using full-scale testing, such as flight tests.
Fluid power is the use of fluids under pressure to generate, control, and transmit power. Fluid power is subdivided into hydraulics using a liquid such as mineral oil or water, and pneumatics using a gas such as air or other gases. Compressed-air and water-pressure systems were once used to transmit power from a central source to industrial users over extended geographic areas; fluid power systems today are usually within a single building or mobile machine.
Hydraulic machines use liquid fluid power to perform work. Heavy construction vehicles are a common example. In this type of machine, hydraulic fluid is pumped to various hydraulic motors and hydraulic cylinders throughout the machine and becomes pressurised according to the resistance present. The fluid is controlled directly or automatically by control valves and distributed through hoses, tubes, and/or pipes.
The electronic–hydraulic analogy is the most widely used analogy for "electron fluid" in a metal conductor. Since electric current is invisible and the processes at play in electronics are often difficult to demonstrate, the various electronic components are represented by hydraulic equivalents. Electricity was originally understood to be a kind of fluid, and the names of certain electric quantities are derived from hydraulic equivalents. As with all analogies, it demands an intuitive and competent understanding of the baseline paradigms.
Mesh generation is the practice of creating a mesh, a subdivision of a continuous geometric space into discrete geometric and topological cells. Often these cells form a simplicial complex. Usually the cells partition the geometric input domain. Mesh cells are used as discrete local approximations of the larger domain. Meshes are created by computer algorithms, often with human guidance through a GUI, depending on the complexity of the domain and the type of mesh desired. The goal is to create a mesh that accurately captures the input domain geometry, with high-quality (well-shaped) cells, and without so many cells as to make subsequent calculations intractable. The mesh should also be fine in areas that are important for the subsequent calculations.
An axial piston pump is a positive displacement pump that has a number of pistons in a circular array within a cylinder block. It can be used as a stand-alone pump, a hydraulic motor or an automotive air conditioning compressor.
A hydraulic motor is a mechanical actuator that converts hydraulic pressure and flow into torque and angular displacement (rotation). The hydraulic motor is the rotary counterpart of the hydraulic cylinder as a linear actuator. Most broadly, the category of devices called hydraulic motors has sometimes included those that run on hydropower but in today's terminology the name usually refers more specifically to motors that use hydraulic fluid as part of closed hydraulic circuits in modern hydraulic machinery.
Hydraulic pumps are used in hydraulic drive systems and can be hydrostatic or hydrodynamic. A hydraulic pump is a mechanical source of power that converts mechanical power into hydraulic energy. It generates flow with enough power to overcome pressure induced by the load at the pump outlet. When a hydraulic pump operates, it creates a vacuum at the pump inlet, which forces liquid from the reservoir into the inlet line to the pump and by mechanical action delivers this liquid to the pump outlet and forces it into the hydraulic system. Hydrostatic pumps are positive displacement pumps while hydrodynamic pumps can be fixed displacement pumps, in which the displacement cannot be adjusted, or variable displacement pumps, which have a more complicated construction that allows the displacement to be adjusted. Hydrodynamic pumps are more frequent in day-to-day life. Hydrostatic pumps of various types all work on the principle of Pascal's law.
The spatial twist continuum is a dual representation of an all hexahedral mesh that defines the global connectivity constraint.
A rotodynamic pump is a kinetic machine in which energy is continuously imparted to the pumped fluid by means of a rotating impeller, propeller, or rotor, in contrast to a positive displacement pump in which a fluid is moved by trapping a fixed amount of fluid and forcing the trapped volume into the pump's discharge. Examples of rotodynamic pumps include adding kinetic energy to a fluid such as by using a centrifugal pump to increase fluid velocity or pressure.
Synopsys Simpleware ScanIP is a 3D image processing and model generation software program developed by Synopsys Inc. to visualise, analyse, quantify, segment and export 3D image data from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), microtomography and other modalities for computer-aided design (CAD), finite element analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and 3D printing. The software is used in the life sciences, materials science, nondestructive testing, reverse engineering and petrophysics.
SimulationX is a CAE software application running on Microsoft Windows for the physical simulation of technical systems developed and sold by ESI ITI GmbH in Dresden, Germany.
CD-adapco was a multinational computer software company that authors and distributes applications used for computer-aided engineering, best known for its computational fluid dynamics (CFD) products.
Flow Science, Inc. is a developer of software for computational fluid dynamics, also known as CFD, a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows.
KIVA is a family of Fortran-based Computational Fluid Dynamics software developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The software predicts complex fuel and air flows as well as ignition, combustion, and pollutant-formation processes in engines. The KIVA models have been used to understand combustion chemistry processes, such as auto-ignition of fuels, and to optimize diesel engines for high efficiency and low emissions. General Motors has used KIVA in the development of direct-injection, stratified charge gasoline engines as well as the fast burn, homogeneous-charge gasoline engine. Cummins reduced development time and cost by 10%–15% using KIVA to develop its high-efficiency 2007 ISB 6.7-L diesel engine that was able to meet 2010 emission standards in 2007. At the same time, the company realized a more robust design and improved fuel economy while meeting all environmental and customer constraints.
Simcenter Amesim is a commercial simulation software for the modeling and analysis of multi-domain systems. It is part of systems engineering domain and falls into the mechatronic engineering field.
Gerris is computer software in the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Gerris was released as free and open-source software, subject to the requirements of the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2 or any later.
FEATool Multiphysics is a physics, finite element analysis (FEA), and PDE simulation toolbox. FEATool Multiphysics features the ability to model fully coupled heat transfer, fluid dynamics, chemical engineering, structural mechanics, fluid-structure interaction (FSI), electromagnetics, as well as user-defined and custom PDE problems in 1D, 2D (axisymmetry), or 3D, all within a simple graphical user interface (GUI) or optionally as convenient script files. Having specifically been designed to have a low learning curve and to be able to be used without requiring reading documentation, FEATool has been employed and used in academic research, teaching, and industrial engineering simulation contexts.