THE INFLUENCE OF ROTATING DOMAIN SIZE IN A ROTATING FRAME OF REFERENCE APPROACH FOR SIMULATION OF ROTATING IMPELLER IN A MIXING VESSEL

This paper presents simulation of rotating impeller in a mixing vessel by meansof Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). A special emphasis is devoted to thestudy of influence of the choice of numerical model for simulation of rotation ofimpeller when mixing a Newtonian fluid in a vessel equipped with Rushtonimpeller, and operating under turbulent flow conditions. In order to determinethe best simulation approach experimental validation of the selected problem isdone by means of Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) system. When using therotating frame of reference approach, the stirring vessel geometry has to be splitinto a stationary and rotating part, and the question arises where to position theinterface between both regions in order to avoid numerical errors, originating innumerical approximations at the interface. To answer this question, acomparison between the CFD based numerical results and experimental results,was made.