Numerical investigation of hydrodynamic tractor-retarder assembly under traction work condition

To obtain the performance characteristics of hydrodynamic tractor-retarder assembly under traction work condition, a numerical simulation model of flow channel was established and tetrahedron unstructured grids were adopted in the meshing stage. The racing rotating speed of the brake wheels was calculated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculation and interpolation, and then accurate boundary condition was applied to the CFD simulation to study the pressure and velocity distribution of internal flow field in hydrodynamic tractor-retarder assembly. Finally, the original characteristics were calculated by CFD post-processing analysis. Comparison of experimental data and flow field analysis results showed that the calculation tolerance of the torque ratio K and the efficiency η was less than 5%, and the calculation tolerance of the pump torque coefficient λ was less than 10%.