An Effect of Fractal Flow Conditioner Thickness on Turbulent Swirling Flow

Fractal flow conditioner is a flow conditioner with a fractal pattern and used to eliminate turbulence originating from pipe fittings in experimental fluid flow applications. In this paper, steady state, incompressible, swirling turbulent flow through circle grid space filling fractal plate (Fractal flow conditioner) has been studied. The solution and the analysis were carried out using finite volume CFD solver FLUENT 6.2. The turbulence model used in this investigation is the standard k-ε model and the results were compared with the pressure drop correlation of BS EN ISO 5167-2:2003. The results showed that the standard k-ε model gave a good agreement with the ISO pressure drop correlation. Therefore, the model was used further to predict the effects of circle grids space filling plate thickness on the flow characteristics.