The Numerical Simulation Of Cup Pig In The Pipeline

As the most widely used pipe cleaner, cup pig plays an important role in the pipelinetransportation. Reasonable selection of pipe cleaner can not only make pipe cleaning smoothly,avoiding blocking, but also can reduce the energy loss in the process of transportation.Nowadays, the study of the pig is mostly based on the gas pipeline, and depended on theexperiments. Therefore, in order to meet the majority of China’s oil pipeline piggingrequirement, the study of the pig seems particularly important.In this paper, considering the actual situation of the pipeline, use the simulation modelingsoftware of SolidWorks to build the model first, and divide the pipe into three parts, includingthe entrance of straight pipe, pipe cleaner, and exit of straight pipe. Then use Gambit softwareto divide the fluid region into mesh, and encrypt the pig part. Use C language which isprovided in UDF module by Fluent and combine the dynamic mesh technique to calculate themodel. Finally, use the TECPLOT to analyze the result of the velocity and the pressure. Studythe effect of the different states of fluid motion and the different pig magnitude of interferenceon the movements of the pig.The result shows that the velocity of the pig has a great change at the state of turbulentcondition. Obviously disturbance and seriously leather wear are also appeared, which hasgreat influence on the function of the pig. At the state of laminar, the velocity field isrelatively stable, and has less wear on the pig. The different magnitudes of interference effecton the pig function, a quite small interference makes a better pass capacity with a poorfunction. However, large one makes a less pass capacity and easily causes blocking. From theanalysis, the about2%-4%magnitude of interference is the best choice.