First time Simscaler here. I’m looking to analyse the friction on a flywheel due to air resistance.
I have set up a basic model below which represents the air space around a flywheel in a chamber - internal faces are the flywheel, external faces are the chamber.
The velocity results seem logical visually, but I don’t know if they’re correct.
In any case, I would like to know the frictional losses experienced by the flywheel in terms of N.m, as a result of air resistance. By extension, I would like to explore the relationship between air pressure (or vacuum) and frictional losses.
Well, if it were easy, everybody would jump on and answer.
I can only offer following explanations:
Cartesian coordinate system, IMHO, seems inappropriate for flywheel simulation. Cylindrical coordinate system would allow a meaningful setup.
Flywheel peripheral speed would be probably supersonic for mid-size devices. This will be tough to simulate, due to instabilities.
Appropriate turbulence model should be searched / tested for simulation. Experimental data should be available for simulations validation / calibration.
There is an interesting study of flywheel design optimization, including air friction:
