Flow of liquid in a thin layer simulation with taking into account the discontinuities and roughness of the boundaries

Abstract

In this paper a fluid flow between two close located rough surfaces depending on their location and discontinuity in contact areas is investigated. The area between surfaces is considered as the porous layer with the variable permeability, depending on roughness and closure of surfaces. For obtaining closure-permeability function, the flow on the small region of surfaces (100 μm) is modeled, for which the surfaces roughness profile created by fractal function of Weierstrass-Mandelbrot. The 3D-domain for this calculation fill out the area between valleys and peaks of two surfaces, located at some distance from each other. If the surfaces get closer, a contacts between roughness peaks will appears and it leads to the local discontinuities in the domain. For the assumed surfaces closure and boundary conditions the mass flow and pressure drop is calculated and based on that, permeability of the equivalent porous layer is evaluated.The calculation results of permeability obtained for set of surfaces closure were approximated by a polynom. This allows us to calculate the actual flow parameters in a thin layer of variable thickness, the length of which is much larger than the scale of the surface roughness. As an example, showing the application of this technique, flow in the gap between the billet and conical die in 3D-formulation is modeled. In this problem the permeability of an equivalent porous layer calculated for the condition of a linear decreased gap.