Comparación de los sistemas de distribución de aire comprimido convencional y anular mediante la herramienta SolidWorks Flow Simulation

Abstract

Considering that compressed air became a fundamental resource for the industrial sector, it is important to identify which can become the best way to distribute this service in compliance with the conditions and requirements of each of the equipment located in the plant distribution, minimizing pressure losses, given by length, valves and fittings, i.e., using the resource in the most efficient way possible. Given this, the proposal of design and comparison of two methods of air distribution using computational tools is presented, where, through the resolution of systems offered by the CFD, a conventional arrangement, or open network, is compared with a system made in an annular way, also called closed network. At the beginning, the study network is surveyed from the piping present in the packing area of the company Casa Luker, then a proposal of the annular system is made with the same working conditions as the existing conventional one, then comparisons are made by CFD calculation offered by the SolidWorks Flow Simulation tool, identifying the behavior of the fluid along the pipe route, and observing the specific output conditions for each of the points of interest. Finally, a comparison between raw material costs and assembly costs of both networks is proposed, thus defining certain advantages and disadvantages that one system may have over the other from different perspectives.