A Numerical and Experimental Investigation of Fluid Flow Through a Venturi Tube

Venturi tubes serve as critical components in various engineering fields. This work focused on investigating the pressure distribution and velocity magnitude from inlet to outlet of the venturi tube, as well as the determination of its performance in terms of coefficient of discharge (CV) using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool Ansys Fluent and experimental tests. The study was conducted in different water fluid actual mass flow rates from 0.1662 to 1.0272 kg/sec. The results show that increasing the inlet flow rate yields an increase in pressure drop, velocity magnitude, and a minor rise in the coefficient of discharge. The study also focused on the inlet/out and throat diameter ratio from 0.207 to 0.586, and the coefficient of discharge increased from 0.11 to 0.96, respectively. The performance is higher in the lowest diameter ratio. On the other hand, the flow separation gradually developed in the divergent section when the diameter ratio decreased. There was a small variation between the CFD results and the experimental test results. The CVwas the main performance evaluation of the venturi tube and have 1.95% and 8.01% a maximum difference between the numerical simulation and experimental study results at various inlet flow rates, respectively. Similarly, the coefficient of discharge result difference between the numerical simulation and experimental test is 1.12%.