Investigation of the Influence of the Connection Type on Fluid Flow in a Pipe System by Numerical Simulation

Currently, when designing a pipe with T-junction, it is often assumed that the use of curved connections can reduce pipe resistance. However, it takes a long time and high cost to make pipe with curved connections, thus making it difficult to promote. This study takes a pipe system with three branch pipes into one main pipe as the research object, and the fluid flow and pressure in four pipe systems with different T-junction (including T-junction with conventional vertical connection and three types of curved connections with different curvature radius of R=2.5D, R=5D and R=7.5D) are verified and analyzed by numerical simulation method. The results show that the curved connection can make the flow in the main pipe more uniform compared to vertical connection, and can also reduce the overall pressure by 57.1% to 66.7% of the pipe wall to increase the service life of the pipe system. However, as the curvature radius of the curved connections of the branch pipe increases, the resistance of branch pipe increased by 16.67%-35.56%.