SIMULIA Direct Coupling / AcuSolve from ACUSIM Software / Peristaltic Pump

Peristaltic Pump

Challenge

Peristaltic pumps are used in a wide array of industries which require pumping clean/sterile fluids or pumping very corrosive fluids. Peristaltic pumps work on the principle of peristalsis where a rotating rotor compresses a flexible hose which contains the fluid to be pumped. The compression and relaxation of the flexible hose causes the fluid to move.

Because the only part of the pump in contact with the fluid is the interior of the flexible hose, it is easy to pump sterile as well as very corrosive fluids making these pumps inexpensive to manufacture and easy to maintain. Since the pumping action is achieved through hose deformation, accurate simulation of interaction between the deformation of pump hose and fluid flow requires a fluid-structure interaction capability.

Solution

Interaction between the pump hose and the fluid flow can be easily simulated using the newly introduced Direct Coupling Interface Abaqus/Explicit coupled to AcuSolve to solve for this fluid-structure interaction analysis. Hose deformation due to rotor motion can be accurately modeled in Abaqus/Explicit using the easy-to-use general contact feature. AcuSolve is used to model the flow domain and can suitably adapt the fluid mesh and compute the pumping action induced in the fluid due to the hose compression and relaxation cycles. The Abaqus/CAE FSI Interface offers a unique interactive approach to manage the entire FSI workflow in the Abaqus/CAE environment.

Benefit

SIMULIA's Multiphysics capabilities provide a complete tool kit to facilitate design and development of peristaltic pumps and help predict their operating characteristics such as rotor RPM vs. fluid discharge pressure, hose compression vs. fluid discharge pressure, etc.