The influence of the numerical solver selection on the nozzle impulse flow simulation results

Abstract

Numerical simulations are currently used for different applications in a various fields of science. Certain solutions are not as obvious as the others while the results can give very valuable conclusions. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is one of the tools that can be used to solve different problems related with the mass and heat transfer. Nowadays it is already known that the impulse flow simulation allows to determine pressure pulsation attenuation parameters by a given geometry. However, the nozzle shape optimization method strongly depends on the numerical results obtained from the impulse flow simulation. In commercial CFD software Ansys-Fluent the obtained results depends strongly on the chosen numerical methods, especially the spatial discretization method. This is the reason to use other software as a benchmark. Alternative software FlowVision was used to perform the impulse flow simulation for the same geometries to compare the results. As there is a different problem definition in both systems the calculations, accuracy and results differ from each other. The paper describes the numerical differences between solvers. Article contains discussion about obtained results and includes hints how to avoid mistakes when user change software, especially in solving unusual CFD problems.