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In recent years, much research has focused on reducing the power consumption of mobile hydraulic machines due to rising fuel costs, regulations on combustion engine emissions and the need to reduce the size and weight of the storage devices in hybrid drives. Current approaches to improve the energy efficiency of a hydraulic system can be classified into four basic groups: reduction of the energy demand, recovery of part of the supplied energy (ERS systems), regeneration of part of the supplied energy and reuse of the recovered and regenerated energy (hybrid systems). Today’s mobile hydraulic systems are often complex, perform different tasks and work under different load conditions, which makes it difficult to analyse energy losses. A study of the energy losses of a hydraulic system from different points of view, such as an energy balance for a complete machine cycle, an analysis of the individual cycle phases and a power analysis for the different operation quadrants of the actuators, can give an global picture of the energy losses, being very useful to rate its energy efficiency, identify main power losses and decide which of the different energy-saving techniques to apply. This paper describes the data collection process, its analysis from various points of view and the summary of the results in easy to understand charts as useful tools to identify and quantify the main energy losses. Only system architecture losses are considered. Losses in the ICE engine or the electric motor, hydraulic pump losses and mechanical losses are outside the scope of this study.

This is a copy of the author 's preprint version of an article published in the journal Experimental techniques. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40799-016-0017-9 This article provides a technical description of a flexible hinge for wind tunnel rigs. For academic purposes, the device was integrated into several rod flexures to build a home-made external wind balance system. The cylindrical elastic element incorporates several notches, and the flexure linkage is able to transmit force in the main axial direction without hindering perpendicular movement. The flexural element described here is simple and easily manufactured, and can also be used with other types of wind balance. The flexure described in this article has similar functionality to those mentioned in the reference section, but has a more compact element. The project's effectiveness was demonstrated in a series of experimental comparisons of forces and moments measured on a wing using the N.A.C.A. Clark-Y airfoil profile.

The fatigue of a hydraulic component inherently varies due to various factors that can be divided into two categories: structural and load spectrum variability. The effects of both variabilities must be considered when determining fatigue life. Compared with the structural variability, determining the variability in the load spectrums is more difficult because the service conditions are complicated and the measurements of the load parameters are slow and expensive. The problem that arises when studying the fatigue behaviour of such components is the transferability of short data samples from real-life load histories, which are application-dependant, to laboratory test methods. Derived from the experimental background and know-how of the authors, this paper proposes a methodology that allows the definition and establishment of the hydraulic cylinder design specificactions, while taking into account the probabilistic characterisation of the load spectrum variability. This methodology could be extrapolated to other hydraulic or mechanical components.

© 2017. This version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ All positive displacement pumps produce a pulsating flow. The present paper reports the experimental measurement of steady flow pulsations in the outlet of the internal wheeled pump. In the measured flow, the manufacturing tolerance are responsible of part of the spectra of the whole pulsation. Time-Resolved Particle Image Velocimetry technique has been used for this purpose. The flow pulsation measurement from a direct visualization of the velocity profile was carried out. The flow rate signal is derived from ad-hoc integration algorithm of the radial velocity profile, where the area discretization is a constant parameter that is relevant to minimize PIV errors by velocity gradients regions near the wall. Spectrographic analysis on the experimental data reveled low frequency components related with manufacturing tolerances. Measurements of this non-invasive procedure are compared with detailed CFD numerical results obtained from an improved gerotor model where manufacturing tolerances have been included. To be compared, cross-power spectral density analysis has been applied. The results reported in the paper show a method to provide a fast non-invasive flow pulsation measurement not only for pumps but also could be extended to compare aging effects of other kind of fluid power devices.

In the last few years, wall shear stress (WSS) has arisen as a new diagnostic indicator in patients with arterial disease. There is a substantial evidence that the WSS plays a significant role, together with hemodynamic indicators, in initiation and progression of the vascular diseases. Estimation of WSS values, therefore, may be of clinical significance and the methods employed for its measurement are crucial for clinical community. Recently, four-dimensional (4D) flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) has been widely used in a number of applications for visualization and quantification of blood flow, and although the sensitivity to blood flow measurement has increased, it is not yet able to provide an accurate three-dimensional (3D) WSS distribution. The aim of this work is to evaluate the aortic blood flow features and the associated WSS by the combination of 4D flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance (4D CMR) and computational fluid dynamics technique. In particular, in this work, we used the 4D CMR to obtain the spatial domain and the boundary conditions needed to estimate the WSS within the entire thoracic aorta using computational fluid dynamics. Similar WSS distributions were found for cases simulated. A sensitivity analysis was done to check the accuracy of the method. 4D CMR begins to be a reliable tool to estimate the WSS within the entire thoracic aorta using computational fluid dynamics. The combination of both techniques may provide the ideal tool to help tackle these and other problems related to wall shear estimation.

A new approach based on the open source tool OpenFOAM is presented for the numerical simulation of a mini gerotor pump working at low pressure. The work is principally focused on the estimation of leakage flow in the clearance disk between pump case and gears. Two main contributions are presented for the performance of the numerical simulation. On one hand, a contact point viscosity model is used for the simulation of solid–solid contact between gears in order to avoid the teeth tip leakage. On the other hand, a new boundary condition has been implemented for the gear mesh points motion in order to keep the mesh quality while moving gears with relative velocity. Arbitrary coupled mesh interface (ACMI) has been used both in the interface between clearance disk in inlet/outlet ports and between clearance disk and interteeth fluid domain. Although the main goal of the work is the development of the numerical method rather than the study of the physical analysis of the pump, results have been compared with experimental measurement and a good agreement in volumetric efficiency and pressure fluctuations has been found. Finally, the leakage flow in the clearance disk has been analyzed.

A gerotor pump, which is widely used in the automotive industry for engine oil lubrication, produces an instantaneous flow fluctuation and the estimation of this is fundamental in order to evaluate the pump quality for silent and smooth operation. The intricate aspects of the pumping process of a gerotor pump make computational fluid dynamics the appropriate tool for modelling and simulation to provide insights into its flow characteristics. Because the instantaneous flow is rather dependent on the teeth contact, a new boundary condition of a virtual wall was developed, which allows simulation of the teeth contact in the interteeth radial clearances. This new boundary condition is utilized in a three-dimensional model of the gerotor pump with mesh deformation and remeshing at every time step by means of a home-made ad-hoc code programmed by the present authors and named viscous wall cell. The code has been integrated into the computational fluid dynamics solver. The interteeth clearances are studied under the following different operating conditions (working pressures and rotational velocities): first, no contact points (no teeth contact is studied in order to prove that, even if the interteeth radial clearance is sufficiently small, the leakage cannot be negligible); second, all contact points (the ideal approach is considered with zero interteeth radial clearances used to model zero manufacturing tolerances); third, one contact point at different locations (the existence of manufacturing tolerances and the teeth contact approach make the pump’s operation and its pumping mechanism more realistic in the simulation). The numerical instantaneous flow is compared with the analytical instantaneous flow, with the instantaneous flow modelled by using the bond graph technique, and with the experimental determination of the flow ripple for a specific unit. The results obtained show the importance of simulating the teeth contact and prove to be an excellent estimation of the instantaneous flow behaviour to obtain the dynamic properties of a gerotor pump under more realistic conditions than its design.

A methodology for analysing the influence of the heat transfer and friction factor correlations in the prediction of the two-phase flows inside horizontal ducts under evaporation phenomena is presented. An experimental unit based on single stage vapor compression refrigerating system with two parallel evaporation devices has been built to work under real refrigeration conditions. The first evaporation device consists of a double pipe evaporator which allows determining the heat flux through the pipe. The second device is an electrically heated pipe evaporator with uniformly distributed temperature and pressure sensors along the fluid path. The experimental data of temperature and pressure distribution along the smooth heated duct is compared with a selected set of heat transfer and friction factor correlations through a detailed numerical evaporation model. The aim of this paper is to determine possible criteria to select the most suitable heat transfer and friction factor correlations available.

Commercial refrigerating systems are mostly based on hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) fluids. The Kyoto Protocol requirements encouraged the promotion of policies for sustainable development and reduction of global warming potential, including the regulation of HCFCs. In that sense, R-744 is the only natural refrigerant replacement known to be nontoxic, nonflammable, and not harmful to the environment. The aim of this work is to aid in the development of new reciprocating compressors for light commercial applications that use CO2 as the fluid refrigerant. First, a numerical analysis and experimental validation were developed and carried out, not only for laboratory compressor prototypes, but also for the whole transcritical CO2 cycle. The numerical comparative results present a reasonably good agreement and successfully allow the use of these numerical tools to improve the successive designs. Consequently, several compressor pre-industrial prototypes have been designed, validated, and improved. The experime...

“Mechanics” and “Fluids” are familiar concepts for any newly-registered engineering student. However, when combined into the term “Fluid Mechanics”, students are thrust into the great unknown. The present article demonstrates the process of adaptation employed by the Fluid Mechanics course in the undergraduate engineering program, along with the teaching methodology, teaching materials and results obtained, evaluating the final objective in terms of student satsfaction and level of learning.

A numerical and experimental comparative study of a carbon dioxide trans-critical refrigerating system and a conventional subcritical refrigerating cycle is presented. Attention is focussed not only on the whole refrigeration cycle, but also on the behaviour of the hermetic reciprocating compressors used in these systems. The comparative cases presented have been specially designed for small cooling capacity units with an evaporation temperature around 0 8C. A detailed numerical simulation model for hermetic reciprocating compressors performance, widely validated under conventional fluid refrigerants, has been extended to numerically obtain the CO2 compressor prototypes behaviour. Two CO2 compressor prototypes working with CO2 have been experimentally tested in a specific unit, specially designed and built to analyse high-pressure single stage vapour compression trans-critical refrigerating equipments. This set-up has allowed validating a detailed numerical simulation code for the thermal and fluid-dynamic behaviour of single stage vapour compression refrigeration system working with CO2 as fluid refrigerant. The numerical results and the experimental data obtained to validate compressors, heat exchangers and whole cycle behaviour have shown a really good agreement. Finally, the numerical and experimental comparison between the carbon dioxide system and the sub-critical conventional cycle has shown the possibility of CO2 as fluid refrigerant under the studied working conditions. q 2005 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.

A novel data acquisition approach to test hermetic reciprocating compressors is presented. A non-uniformly sampled application of a ΣΔ analogue-to-digital converter was used to investigate the compressor pV diagram, together with accurate spectral analysis of pressure readings. Several previous approaches are presented and compared with the one proposed here. Different statistical comparisons have been carried out with the main objective of demonstrating the good performance of the proposal.

A detailed experimental analysis of the thermal and fluid dynamic behavior of hermetic reciprocating compressors is presented. A hermetic compressor for household appliances has been experimentally tested. The fluid and solid thermal map evolution has been logged in several strategic points. The absolute instantaneous pressure has been determined in three specific zones: suction muffler, compression chamber, and cylinder head. The pV diagram inside the compressor chamber has also been experimentally obtained for the different working conditions studied without any previous hypothesis to determine the absolute pressure level. A complete description of the experimental equipment and its instrumentation is included. This experimental approach has allowed validating a mathematical model developed for the numerical simulation of the thermal and fluid dynamic behavior of hermetic reciprocating compressors. Good agreement between the detailed numerical results and the experimental data has been obtained, allowin...

Trochoidal gear pumps produce significant flow pulsations that result in pressure pulsations, which interact with the system where they are connected, shortening the life of both the pump and circuit components. The complicated aspects of the operation of a gerotor pump make computational fluid dynamics the proper tool for modelling and simulating its flow characteristics. A three-dimensional model with deforming mesh computational fluid dynamics is presented, including the effects of the manufacturing tolerance and the leakage inside the pump. A new boundary condition is created for the simulation of the solid contact in the interteeth radial clearance. The experimental study of the pump is carried out by means of time-resolved particle image velocimetry, and results are qualitatively evaluated, thanks to the numerical simulation results. Time-resolved particle image velocimetry is developed in order to adapt it to the gerotor pump, and it is proved to be a feasible alternative to obtain the instantaneous flow of the pump in a direct mode, which would allow the determination of geometries that minimize the non-desired flow pulsations. Thus, a new methodology involving computational fluid dynamics and time-resolved particle image velocimetry is presented, which allows the obtaining of the instantaneous flow of the pump in a direct mode without altering its behaviour significantly.

The numerical analysis of an external gear pump with cavitation effects has been validated with experimental data obtained by applying Time-Resolved Particle Image Velocimetry. The effect of inlet and outlet pressure on volumetric efficiency has been studied numerically. First, the Particle Image Velocimetry method was used to analyze the two-dimensional velocity field in the middle plane of the suction chamber of the gear pump. The main improvement, with respect to previous similar analysis is the use of alginate micro particles as tracers. It is seen that the two-dimensional model is able to characterize the flow field of the real pump in the region of the inlet chamber in which cavitation is expected. In a previous study, it was seen that a cavitation cloud acted as a virtual contact point at low pressure, being responsible for an increase on the volumetric efficiency. The first set of simulations represents the pump working with high outlet pressure. Now, the cavitation cloud is not present and cavitation no longer helps to improve the efficiency of the pump. The second set of simulations represents the pump with an inlet loss factor, which implies a mean inlet pressure below atmospheric conditions. This allows cavitation clouds to propagate upstream. Despite the larger cavitation clouds, volumetric efficiency only drops at high operating velocities, when some clouds become trapped between gears and casing and are transported to the pressure side.

In northeast Argentina, several species of hard wood, e.g. Algarrobo and Quebracho, are used for building furniture. To obtain high quality products in this and many other climates, artificial drying is required; typically, wood is dried in convection dryers. In this project the drying air is heated by solar energy in a collector resembling a greenhouse tunnel. Then passing through a drying chamber with the wood stapled inside it removes moisture from the product. The air flow in this special system is generated by natural convection in a chimney due to the lower density of hot air with respect to cold air. At the Institute of Agricultural Engineering of the Technical University Munich a TRNSYS simulation model for the wood drying process was developed using the physical properties of the drying product. Further modules developed describe the collector tunnel, the drying chamber and the chimney. Meteorological data and material coefficients are provided from external data files. Modelling of the wood drying process is advantageous for system design, development of control strategies and system optimization. Especially in applications with solar energy supply and its transient availability such a theoretical model is a helpful tool for research and consultancy. The simulation program predicts moisture and temperature within the product, it also calculates energy flows and ideally achievable drying results. In parallel with this theoretical work in Germany an experimental plant was designed and built in Resistencia, Argentina. The system is equipped with a data acquisition system for detailed monitoring of the solar plant and the drying process. The results gained from this project confirm several advantages of solar wood drying techniques. The drying time is marginally longer than with conventional systems but much shorter than with open air drying. Damage of the wood during drying can be avoided as well as external damage. Operating costs are low since neither special control equipment nor fuel is necessary.

Recent technology advancements in Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique offers a new possibility to study the complex turbulent flows over a wide range of scales. It can be used for the estimation of the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate including spatial derivatives of the velocity fluctuation components. In this study the flow characteristics of an external gear pump were studied with time-resolved Particle Image Velocimetry. Measurements were performed for two different spatial resolution configurations and various interrogation areas to estimate the dissipation rate of the turbulent kinetic energy. Results show that the spatial resolution is a critical factor in the accuracy of the measurements in the dissipation rate estimations. The optimal results can be achieved if the interrogation area is neither too large (sampling phenomenon) nor too small (noise in the measurement data). The effect of number of samples employed in the ensemble-averaging was considered as well.

Hydraulic machines are faced with increasingly severe performance requirements. The need to design smaller and more powerful machines rotating at higher speeds in order to provide increasing efficiencies has to face a major limitation: cavitation. The problem is inherently three-dimensional, due to the axial clearances, the relief and circumferential grooves, and to the circular pipes through which the fluid enters and exits the pump. A simplified two-dimensional numerical approach by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been developed for studying the effect of cavitation in the volumetric efficiency of external gear pumps. The assumptions employed prevent from predicting realistic values of the volumetric efficiency, but show to be valid to understand the complex flow patterns that take place inside the pump and to study the influence of cavitation on volumetric efficiency. A method for simulating the contact between solid boundaries by imposing changes in viscosity has been developed. Experiments of unsteady cavitation in water and oil performed by other authors have been numerically reproduced using different cavitation models in order to select the most appropriate one and to adjust its parameters. The influence of the rotational speed of the pump has been analyzed. Cavitation in the suction chamber very effectively damps the water hammer associated to the sudden change of the contact point position at the end of the gearing cycle. At high rotational speeds, the volume of air becomes more stable, reducing the flow irregularity. When cavitation takes place at the meshing region downstream from the contact point, the volume of air that appears acts as a virtual second contact point, increasing the volumetric efficiency of the pump.

As trochoidal-gear pump specifications become more demanding and design cycles shorter, the use of an innovative tool for modeling and simulation can be a cost effective and valuable guide to a more effective experimental work. The existing methodologies and software fail to thoroughly address the design by taking into account real effects to maximize efficiency and reduce flow fluctuation. Two new modules are added to the structured methodology of GeroLAB: minimum clearance module, teeth clearance related to leakage phenomenon, and relief groove effective port area module, modeling sharp rims with relief grooves in the porting plate which are related to flow performance. An analysis of the manufactured tolerance is conducted in four gear sets and results are compared and contrast. By using the bond graph model of a specific gerotor pump, flow performance is studied in nine cases with different relief grooves geometries and significant results are drawn. As a conclusion, these new modules aim to continue leading the designer to enhance the efficiency of a gerotor pump and the manufacturer to reduce costs by reducing time in experimental stage.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) A new approach for simulating liquid poured from a tilting lip spout is presented, using neither a dynamic mesh nor the moving solid solution method. In this case only the tilting ladle is moving, so we propose to rotate the gravitational acceleration at an angular velocity prescribed by a geometrical and dynamical calculation to keep the poured flow rate constant. This angular velocity is applied to modify the orientation of the gravity vector in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations using the OpenFOAM® toolbox. Also, fictitious forces are considered. The modified solver is used to calculate the impingement location for six spout geometries and compare the jet dispersion there. This method could offer an inexpensive tool to calculate optimal spout geometries to reduce sprue size in the metal casting industry.

Recently several works have been published on numerical simulation of an external gear pump (EGP). Such kinds of pumps are simple and relatively inexpensive, and are frequently used in fluid power applications, such as fluid power in aeronautical, mechanical, and civil engineering. Nevertheless, considerable effort is being undertaken to improve efficiency and reduce noise and vibration produced by the flow and pressure pulsations. Numerical simulation of an EGP is not straightforward principally for two main reasons. First, the gearing mechanism between gears makes it difficult to handle a dynamic mesh without a considerable deterioration of mesh quality. Second, the dynamic metal–metal contact simulation is important when high pressure outflow has to be reproduced. The numerical studies published so far are based on a two-dimensional (2D) approximation. The aim of the present work is to contribute to the understanding of the fluid flow inside an EGP by means of a complete three-dimensional (3D) parallel simulation on a cluster. The 3D flow is simulated in a linux cluster with a solver developed with the openfoam Toolbox. The hexahedral mesh quality is maintained by periodically replacing the mesh and interpolating the physical magnitudes fields. The meshing contact point is simulated with the viscous wall approach, using a viscosity model based on wall proximity. The results for the flow rate ripples show a similar behavior to that obtained with 2D simulations. However, the flow presents important differences inside the suction and the discharge chambers, principally in the regions of the pipes' connection. Moreover, the decompression slot below the gearing zone, which can not be simulated with a 2D approximation, enables a more realistic simulation of a contact ratio greater than 1. The results are compared with experimental measurements recently published.