Energies, Vol. 12, Pages 4354: A Numerical Investigation of the Influence of Geometric Parameters on the Performance of a Multi-Channel Confluent Water Supply (Energies)

Transportation efficiency is a problem of particular interest in multi-channel confluent water supply engineering. Transportation efficiency depends not only on the system control strategy but also on the pressure loss (pressure difference between the inlet and outlet) and pressure drop (amplitude of outlet pressure fluctuations) of its structure. In this article, sensitivity analyses of the pressure loss and pressure drop to changes in multi-channel confluent water supply geometry are presented. An experimental set-up was established to validate computational fluid dynamic (CFD) predictions and obtain the boundary conditions for two-channel synchronous switching. The influences of the geometric structure varies by the clustered pipe diameter (40 mm < Dc < 80 mm), main pipe diameter (30 mm < Do < 80 mm), channel pitch (60 mm < L < 400 mm) and number of channels (2 ≤ n ≤ 4); those variables were investigated with the help of CFD simulations. The results showed that configuration “C” can be considered a costless method of decreasing pressure loss (βC(2.05) < βA(2.42) < βB(2.64)) and that the different configurations are insensitive to pressure drop. The variations of the influence of channel pitch and clustered pipe diameter on pressure loss have extremes at L/d = 5 and Dc/d = 2.5, respectively, but the effect on pressure drop is not obvious. The main pipe diameter and the inlet velocity have more significant influences on efficiency. The results can be used to choose the proper geometry of multi-channel confluent water supply to enable energy savings.