Optimizing Clearance Fit of Screw Pump for Thermal Recovery of Petroleum Using Fluid–Structure Thermal Coupling

It is important to incorporate the effects of fluid–structure thermal coupling and the boundary conditions when calculating the thermal dynamics and response of screw pumps. This study develops a fluid–structure thermal coupling model of the screw pump to improve the accuracy of its measured field of deformation and the temperature field of the stator. A function for the macroscopic motion of a rigid body is written in a typical fluid domain, and the user-defined function (UDF) in FLUENT is used to load the boundary of the rotor to realize its planetary motion. The viscoelastic hysteretical heat of the stator is treated as the internal source of heat. The heat flux on the surface of the stator is calculated by the ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL). The sequential fluid–structure thermal coupling of the screw pump is calculated by using the ANSYS workbench. A scheme for optimizing the fit clearance of the stator and the rotor is given to improve the volumetric efficiency of the screw pump and prevent the stator from being stuck owing to a large deformation. The average deviation in the calculated volumetric efficiency was less than 5% compared with the experimental values