Numerical and experimental investigation of flow through vane swirlers

This paper is concerned with the computational and experimental study of steady flow through vane swirlers for various vane angles from 15° to 60° in steps of 15°. In the computational study the geometry and meshing is done using pre-processor GAMBIT. Three dimensional flow within the geometry and through the swirler has been simulated by solving the appropriate governing equations viz. conservation of mass and momentum using FLUENT code. Turbulence effects are taken care of by the Reynolds stress model for high swirls and standard k-ε model for low swirls. The effects of vane angle on flow characteristics have been studied. A parametric study is done for a 45° vane swirler to investigate the effect of number of vanes. Experimental results of axial velocity profiles downstream of the swirler are found to be in close agreement with the numerical results. The total pressure loss factor, maximum reverse velocity and maximum reverse mass flow for each swirler are determined Copyright © 2005 by ASME.