Modelling three‐dimensional rotating flows in cylindrical‐shaped vessels

Abstract

This paper reports on a study concerned with the numerical simulation of dough kneading that arises in the food processing industry. The flows considered are in a complex domain setting. Two dough mixers running at various rotation speeds are studied; one with a single stirrer, the other with two stirrers.Stirrers are fixed on the lid of the vessel and the motion is driven by the rotation of the outer vessel. Two different mixer orientations are considered, generating horizontal or vertical-rotating flow fields. Three-dimensional numerical simulations are performed on the full flow equations in a cylindrical polar co-ordinates system, through a finite-element, semi-implicit time stepping, Taylor-Galerkin pressure-correction scheme. The results reflect excellent agreement against the equivalent experimental findings. The motivation for this work is to develop advanced technology to model the kneading of dough. The ultimate target is to predict and adjust the design of dough mixers, so that optimal dough processing may be achieved notably, with reference to local rate-of-work input.

Distributed parallel computation for complex rotational flows of non‐Newtonian fluids

“…To the future, possible extensions to the present work lie in considering variants in rheology and three-dimensional settings (see [1,2,5,35]). The latter is important when it is necessary to consider full flow fields within the mixervessel, say under part-filled scenarios.…”

“…To compute numerical solutions in primary variables of velocity, pressure and stress, we follow equations (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8). Here, this involves a parallelised timemarching finite element algorithm.…”

“…Our earlier work in this area has lead in the direction of fully three-dimensional viscous flows [1], transient free-surface viscous flows [2], and viscoelastic flows with one and two-stirrer mixer designs [3]. See also [4], concerning the related topic of three-dimensional swirling flows in a cylindrical vessel driven by the motion of the vessel lid.…”

An iterative stabilized CNBS–CG scheme for incompressible non-isothermal non-Newtonian fluid flow

“…(14). The justification of discarding the term may be expected and indeed it is validated by the numerical study [20,21] that omission of the term does not cause inaccuracy, instead enhances stability of the scheme. On the other hand, preservation of the term will induce severe difficulties in the numerical solutions of Eq.…”

Modelling the Mixing Process of Liquids With Concentrates in Capsules

“…Traditionally mixing has been achieved by stirring and is used in food production lines in factories [15]. They make use of the baffled-imposed turbulence to provide mixing.…”