ABSTRACT Cleaning‐in‐place (CIP) systems are essential in the food, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries. However, the effective cleaning of complex curved surfaces, such as those found in storage tanks, remains a challenge. Current practices often rely on inefficient empirical methods, owing to an incomplete understanding of flow dynamics over curved surfaces, which can result in either excessive resource consumption or inadequate cleaning. Although Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been widely employed to investigate water jets, most existing studies focus on flat walls, creating a significant knowledge gap. To address this, this study conducts a systematic CFD investigation of the water jet cleaning process on a vertical cylindrical wall. Using the Volume of Fluid (VOF) model and the k ‐ ω SST turbulence model, we simulated the effects of jet velocity (5–13 m s −1 ), nozzle‐wall distance (60–175 mm), wall contact angle (30°–150°), and curvature (0–6.67 m −1 ). The results demonstrate that, while jet velocity predominantly governs the wall shear stress distribution within the radial flow zone, the nozzle‐wall distance, wall contact angle, and surface curvature become more influential in the peripheral film region. We developed dimensionless correlations, showing that the effective cleaning area scales with Re 1.16 and the maximum wall shear stress scales with Re −0.489 . Furthermore, efficiency analysis demonstrates a clear trade‐off, with energy efficiency decreasing and water efficiency increasing at higher Re . This study provides quantitative design guidelines and a theoretical basis for optimizing CIP processes on curved surfaces, thereby helping to reduce resource consumption without sacrificing cleaning performance.
Zhu et al. (2026) studied this question.