Two Phase Flow Simulation of Water Ring Vacuum Pump Using VOF Model

Due to the complex two phase flow, CFD simulation of liquid ring pump used to be extremely challenging. Using a recently developed Volume of Fluid (VOF) two phase flow model, this paper presents a 3D transient CFD model for a water ring vacuum pump. The test simulations show that the new VOF model is very robust and can catch most of the important physics when applied to a industrial water ring vacuum pump. Model formulation and problem setup will be presented in detail in the paper. Important issues that could affect the simulation results will be discussed. Water ring pump flow field characteristics revealed from simulation results will be summarized with explanation. And finally the simulation results will be compared with experiment test data.