Need help designing a water meter turbine
This is for a hobby project, not a business.
I need help designing a water wheel to fit inside a 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe. I am reasonably proficient with Alibre, but this is beyond my capabilities. I will be adding a small magnet on one blade, and using a magnetoresistive component, I can the count rotations, and convert to flow rate and volume of water used.
If someone can design this for me, I am willing to pay a reasonable fee for the design. Grabcad has several parts that I can almost use, but they have blades that taper to a sharp edge. That sharp edge will not 3D print. So blade profile must either be constant thickness, or have minimal thickness variation.
I am not concerned about number of blades, as I can take care of that in software, although I would prefer 5 or more for resolution purposes.
I can be reached at george@univent.org to discuss.
1 Answer
I think i can do it. Your task is hard if we want get video how water rotates the turbine. In this case we have to solve Transient task with Rigid body.
But if we want get result without video your task is much simpler. In this case we can solve Static task with fixed mass flow rate but we must do many iterations. In the first calculation we set that our turbine not rotate. After the calculation we get momentum on our turbine. This momentum will be get the maximum value. Then we do second iterations where we add increment to revolutions. In this case the momentum will be smaller than in the first iterations. Our goal is find rotates where momentum on the turbine blades will be zero. It will be theoretical rotates, because physically we always have the frictional force and because actual rotates value will be less than theoretical rotates. (We also can take into account the frictional force, but we need have a rotor model with bearings; I think you first have to get the theoretical rotates).
I can do it using Ansys CFX. If you interested send me your model. I will do calculation for free, because I'm just curious.
