The development of special software for the numerical simulation of flow through oil filters was the subject of a project in cooperation with IBS Filtran . An oil filter consists of a box with an inlet and an outlet, which are completely separated by the filter medium. Computer simulation in the design stage provides several advantages:

• evaluation of the pressure drop - flow rate ratio before manufacturing a prototype,
• optimal design of the ribs (supporting the filter medium) on the basis of flow computations,
• efficiency evaluation of the designed housing and
• evaluation of a uniform loading of the filter medium.

Available commercial CFD software packages do not provide the possibility of an adequate modeling or efficient simulation of the respective problems, which is why the development of specialized algorithms and software is necessary.

The software SuFiS, which has been developed during this project, performs the numerical simulation of coupled incompressible flows in arbitrary cavities with porous media. It is equipped with GUI, an interface for CAD data, and a powerful visualization tool. The development of the CAD interface is based on the level set method. The mathematical model and the developed algorithm are specialized for the requirements of filtration simulation, thus showing excellent efficiency with respect to the analysis of the investigated filtration process. The developed solver provides detailed information about velocity and pressure distribution in the filter (in particular, in the filter medium), thus assisting engineers in the design of more efficient filters.

Visualisierung von Filtersimulationen mit PV-4D