Turbulent flow in closed and free-surface unbaffled tanks stirred by radial impellers

Modelling vortex formation in an unbaffled stirred tank reactors

“…The modelling of stirred tanks has been long established to characterise rotational flow [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. For the majority of numerical studies of stirred tanks the liquid surface is not considered to deform with agitation (i.e.…”

“…The vortex formed in the unbaffled stirred tank was numerically investigated [10,14] to good effect by achieving a close comparison with the experimental results [22].…”

“…The technique used in [10] is comparatively difficult to implement as the free surface is considered as part of the mesh. Therefore, the mesh deforms to the shape of the vortex or fluid surface as a converged solution of the flow field is calculated [10].…”

“…Therefore, the mesh deforms to the shape of the vortex or fluid surface as a converged solution of the flow field is calculated [10].…”

“…These investigations [10,14,22] provide the physical basis to validate an alternative approach to modelling the free surface of the liquid. This approach, described in the following sections, utilises both the volume of fluid and multiple reference frame techniques to assess the effect that agitation has on the formation of a vortex in an unbaffled stirred tank.…”