The geometric complexity and high-pressure gradients that characterize the design of the flow field of gear pumps make it very difficult to obtain an accurate CFD simulation of the component. Usually, assumptions are made both in terms of geometrical features and physics being included in the analysis. The contact between the teeth, which is a key factor for the correct functioning of these pumps, represents a critical challenge in 3D CFD simulations, mainly due to the intrinsic limits of the dynamic meshing techniques that can hardly effectively manage a zero or close to zero gap point forming during gear rotation. The geometric complexity and high-pressure gradients that characterize the gear pump flow field make a CFD analysis quite difficult, and the contact between the gear teeth is usually avoided, thus being an extremely important feature. In this paper, a gear pump composed of inlet and outlet pipes was considered, and the contact between the gear’s teeth was modeled in two different ways, one where it is effectively implemented and one where it is avoided using distancing and a proper casing modification. Herein, a new methodology is proposed for the application of the dynamic mesh method in the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ environment using an adaptive remeshing technique. The proposed methodology is compared with the alternative overset meshing method available in the software. The new meshing method is implemented using a user-routing that reproduces the real geometry of the gears while rotating during the pump operation, with teeth contact included. The routine is optimized in order to limit the additional computation and time needed for the remeshing process. The results that can be obtained using the two meshing approaches for the gear pump are compared in terms of computational effort and the accuracy of the results. The two methods showed opposite results in almost all the reported results, with the overset being more precise in the radial pressure evaluation and the dynamic being more reliable in the cavitation/aeration extension cloud.

In this paper, the suction capabilities of an innovative high speed external gear pump have been measured and analysed for verifying its potential use as a reliable and efficient power unit for electro-hydraulic actuated automotive transmissions. In particular, with the aim to face extremely challenging operating conditions, mainly in terms of rotational speed, this specific type of volumetric machine is designed with both two suction and delivery ports. All the experimental measurements have been performed by using a specifically tailored test bench, equipped with a double Cardan joint and an overdrive, designed for running the pump over a wide range of rotational speeds, spanning between 400 and 7000 rpm, and applying a delivery pressure of about 45 bar, very close to a typical actuation value of a high-performance automotive hydraulic transmission. Furthermore, with the aim to confirm the consistency of the experimental measurements, two identical prototypes of the high speed external gear pump have been tested and compared for two different values of the operating temperature, respectively equal to 40 and 60oC. First of all, the higher efficiency of the pump primary suction port has been clearly highlighted and evaluated. Moreover, for rotational speed values higher than 4000 rpm, a significant increase of the volumetric flow rate delivered by the pump can be achieved using both the suction ports together and, thus, this particular hydraulic configuration can be considered as a very promising design solution for the entire actuation system.

This paper proposes a CFD methodology for the simulation of the slipper’s dynamics of a swash-plate axial piston unit under actual operating conditions. The study considers a typical slipper design, including a vented groove at the swash-plate interface. The dynamic fluid–body interaction (DFBI) model is exploited to find the instantaneous position of the slipper, while the morphing approach is adopted to cope with the corresponding mesh distortion. A modular approach is adopted to ensure high-quality mesh on the entire slipper surface and sliding interfaces provide the fluid dynamic connection between neighboring regions. The external forces acting on the slipper are included by means of user-defined lookup tables with the simulation estimating the lift force induced by fluid compression. Moreover, the force produced by the metal-to-metal contact between the slipper and the swash plate is modeled through a specific tool of the software. The pressure signal over an entire revolution of the pump is taken as an input of the simulation and a variable time step is used to manage the high-pressure gradients occurring in the regions of inner and outer dead points of the piston. The weakly compressible characteristic of the fluid is considered by a specific pressure-dependent density approach, and the two-equation eddy-viscosity k-ω SST (shear stress transport) model is used to assess the turbulent behavior of the flow. Furthermore, the transitional model predicts the onset of transition, thus solving different equations depending on whether the flow enters a laminar or turbulent regime. In conclusion, the proposed methodology investigates the motion of the slipper in response to several external forces acting on the component. The numerical results are discussed in terms of variable clearance height, pressure distribution within the gap, and lift forces acting on the slipper under specific pump operations.