Inlet pipe side slot shape´s impact on pump´s suction: Modeling and simulation

Cooling efficiency is an important index for the performance evaluation of cooling unit for hydraulic system. Sucking oil with higher temperature into cooling unit is helpful to increase the cooling efficiency. This requires the suction port be set as close as possible to oil surface, because the oil with high temperature is always close to oil surface. But, setting suction port too close to the oil surface many increase the risk of air suction, which is harmful to system health and cooling efficiency. To settle the conflict, this paper proposes an optimal apparatus with inlet pipe of width-variable side slots to increase the cooling efficiency of cooling unit. Using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method, we simulate the flow field inside the inlet pipe with three different forms of side slot. The quickness and amount of the upper-layer oil moving into the suction port is adopted as the index to evaluate different side slot shapes´ impact on pump´s suction. According to simulation results, the shape of side slot with variable width has the obvious impact pump´s suction, and the side slot with curved shape is better to improve pump´s suction than those with rectangle shape or triangle shape.