SIMULATION AND COMPARISON OF MOINEAU PUMP

Abstract

Moineau Pump, also famously known as Progressing Cavity Pump was patented in early 1930's by Rene Moineau. This Pump has been under commercial usage since 1970's. This thesis majorly deals with the simulation of the model of a Progressing Cavity Pump and comparing between two models which are available for generation of the cross-section of this Pump. The first model was proposed by Moineau and it has been termed as Traditional Model in this thesis. The other model has been proposed by Gravesen and his research team in 2006. This second model has been called as the Gravesen Model in this paper and this model is developed by using an alternate Hypo-epi cycloid geometry. The flow rates for same stator diameter have been - compared for both these models and the results prove that the Gravesen model is better. The other main deciding factor for usage of Gravesen model or traditional model is the problem of Slippage from the gap between the rotor and the stator. Belcher I. suggested that this slippage can be modeled by considering a rotating cylinder between two plates. This Belcher model was simulated using ANSYS. The geometry was developed in the design modeler and the meshing was done in the ANSYS. The solver used was ANSYS-Fluent. The results showed that the slippage is significant in Progressing Cavity Pump. In case of a metal stator - metal rotor pump, the slippage becomes an important factor. The slippage depends on the Pressure between two zones and also on the RPM. One additional factor of recirculation of fluid is observed which has rA been discussed in the thesis The cross-section of the Gravesen model of the Progressing Cavity pump has been developed in Matlab, the code of which has been attached in this thesis report. The points on this curve thus obtained were brushed and moved to Solidworks, software by Dassault Systems. The three-dimensional model of the rotor and stator along with other key parts were developed in Solidworks. The images of these developed parts have been added in the thesis. These developed parts have also been meshed in ANSYS.