Prediction of head loss for fly ash-water slurry flow through 90° bend pipe using Computational fluid dynamics

The current work was performed to investigate the head loss characteristics in bend pipes for the transportation of solid–liquid suspension using commercial Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool ANSYS Fluent. Fly-ash was taken as the solid particle. The concentration was varied from 10 to 50% (by weight) along with the flow velocity ranging from 1.5 to 4.5 m/s. A number of simulations were performed by the SST k-ω turbulence model. The mean diameter of fly ash particle was taken 45 μm. According to the findings, head loss increases with the flow velocity and solid concentration. The head loss increased by 8.12, 9.91 and 11.76% as the solid concentration changed from 20 to 30, 30–40 and 40–50% respectively for flow velocity of 4.5 m/s. Head loss increases more with increase in velocity as compare to solid concentration. With the help of contours, distribution of the solid suspension, flow velocity, and the influence of turbulence inside the bend shape was also investigated. © 2022