Research Article Modeling the Uniformity of Manifold with Various Configurations Jafar M. Hassan, 1 Thamer A. Mohamed, 2 Wahid S. Mohammed, 1 and Wissam H. Alawee 1 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq 2 Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia Correspondence should be addressed to Jafar M. Hassan; jafarmehdi1951@yahoo.com Received 14 February 2014; Accepted 24 July 2014; Published 24 August 2014 Academic Editor: Mohy S. Mansour Copyright © 2014 Jafar M. Hassan et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Te fow distribution in manifolds is highly dependent on inlet pressure, confguration, and total inlet fow to the manifold. Te fow from a manifold has many applications and in various felds of engineering such as civil, mechanical, and chemical engineering. In this study, physical and numerical models were employed to study the uniformity of the fow distribution from manifold with various confgurations. Te physical model consists of main manifold with uniform longitudinal section having diameter of 10.16 cm (4 in), fve laterals with diameter of 5.08 cm (2 in), and spacing of 22 cm. Diferent inlet fows were tested and the values of these fows are 500, 750, and 1000 L/min. A manifold with tapered longitudinal section having inlet diameters of 10.16 cm (4 in) and dead end diameter of 5.08 cm (2 in) with the same above later specifcations and fow rates was tested for its uniformity too. Te percentage of absolute mean deviation for manifold with uniform diameter was found to be 34% while its value for the manifold with nonuniform diameter was found to be 14%. Tis result confrms the efciency of the nonuniform distribution of fuids. 1. Introduction Flow in manifold is of great importance in many industrial processes when it is necessary to distribute a large fuid stream into several smaller streams and then to collect them into one discharge stream. Manifolds can usually be categorized into one of the following types [1]: dividing, combining, parallel, and reverse fow manifolds as shown in Figure 1. Parallel and reverse fow manifolds are those which combine dividing and combining fow manifolds and are most commonly used in plate heat exchangers. In a parallel fow manifold, the fow directions in dividing and combining fow headers are the same which is generally referred to as a -manifold. In a reverse fow manifold, the fow direc- tions are opposite and it is referred to as a -manifold. A uniform fow distribution requirement is a common issue in many engineering circumstances such as plate-type heat exchangers, piping system, heat sinks for cooling of electronic devices, fuel cells, chemical reactors, solar thermal collectors, fow distribution systems in treatment plant, and the piping system of pumping stations. Terefore, for most applications, the goal of manifold design is to achieve a uniform fow distribution through all of the lateral exit ports. A great number of experimental, analytical, and numerical studies deal with fow in manifold. Te fow in distribution manifold has been studied by several investigators [2–6]. For instance, Bajura [2] developed the general theoretical model for investigation of the per- formance of single-phase fow distribution for both intake and exhaust manifolds. Bajura and Jones Jr. [3] extended the previous model and the prediction for the fow rates and the pressures in the headers of dividing, combining, reverse, and parallel manifold confgurations. Majumdar [4] developed a mathematical model with one-dimensional elliptic solution procedure for predicting fows in dividing and combining fow manifolds. Bassiouny and Martin [5, 6] presented an analytical solution for the prediction of fow and pressure distribution in both intake and exhaust conduits of heat exchanger for both types fow (-type and -type). A great number of experimental and numerical studies covered the efect of design parameters on fow distribution in manifold. Choi et al. [7, 8] studied numerically the efect of Reynolds number and the width ratio on the fow distribution in manifolds of a liquid cooling module for Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Fluids Volume 2014, Article ID 325259, 8 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/325259