Challenges and Solutions to Visualize and Optimize the Flow inside Gear Oil Quenching Tank Using CFD Methods

As Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods evolve and mature, more engineering problems are being solved through computer simulation to reduce reliance on the costly and time-consuming experimental methods. While the CFD methods have made significant advancements, gaps still exist between the academic research and industrial applications. In the case of the oil quenching processes, the prospect of using CFD methods to visualize and study the oil flow pattern in the gear quenching tank is promising yet challenging. The obstacle to CFD simulation of the oil quenching process lies in building a computer simulation model that encompasses all the geometrical details of the quenching tank, fixtures, centrifugal pumps, and gears, including all the gear teeth. This task is particularly challenging for Finite Volume Method (FVM) CFD solvers, as the computation mesh could take days or weeks to build. In this research, a new solution method based on Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is introduced to simulate the oil flow in the gear quenching tank. Since SPH is a mesh-free Lagrangian method, it not only greatly simplifies the mesh generation task for building the computational models but also handles the complex physics of the free surface flow and fluid-structure interaction with great ease.