The fluid—solid coupling analysis of screw conveyor in drilling fluid centrifuge based on ANSYS

In the centrifugal separations of drilling fluid, screw conveyor is a critical component to push and separate the sediment. The work performance and structural parameters of conveyor are immediately related to the production capability, the working life and the separating effect of the centrifuge. The existing researches always use the theoretical calculation of the approximate loads to analyze the strength of conveyor, and it cannot reflect the stress situations accurately. In order to ensure the precise mastery of the working performance, this article obtained pressure distribution under working conditions from CFX evaluation and gained equivalent stress and deformation under several load conditions by using the ANSYS Workbench platform to check the strength of conveyor.The results showed that the influence of centrifugal hydraulic pressure was less than that of centrifugal force on the strength and deformation of conveyor. Besides, the maximum equivalent stress occurred at the inside of the feed opening, while the maximum deformation occurred at the conveyor blade edge of taper extremity. Furthermore, whether considered the feed opening or not,the computing model had a great influence on the analysis results, and the simplified loads had a great influence on the deformation analysis results. The methods and results from this article can provide reference for the design and the improvement of screw conveyor.