Use of CFD for Validation of Physical Parameters in the Design of Good Fan Gates for RIM Tools

A comprehensive fully three dimensional CFD study has been performed to determine significant parameters in good fan gate design for RIM tools. It has been validated that by making the fan gate sufficiently restrictive, desirable gate area increase can be achieved without causing flow separation. Gates with varying area increase in the flow direction have been studied over inlet Reynolds number range of 10 to 1000. Overall gate pressure loss coefficients have been found to be almost independent of Reynolds number over this range.