Is it possible to tune water flow in a parallel loop to suit different restrictions?

[OldChap]

Liam....If you want to experiment before you build then I would recommend you get some plumbing parts and some tubing and a few valves. If you can include a flow meter of some sort, even if only in the main pipe from the pump, better still.

I wanted to know more about the effects of parallel flow and of reducing flow in modern high flow blocks. Lets just say I was surprised by the results.

My test "bench"



What you are seeing are 22mm (3/4") feed and return with 15mm (1/2") branch pipes with tubes pushed on and held with worm drives. I have since added more valves so that I can isolate a single rig and remove with only a small fluid loss from the system.

I think you could do all of yours in 15mm for the purposes of testing and once the concept is proven or the individual paths tweaked then moving to a build inside a rig becomes just a matter of engineering a solution

[Liam_G]

Good detail in your discussion Liam. I cleaned up some of the posts in the thread, even though the poster apparently read the info after being rude).

Let's keep the conversation to the technical discussion, as directed by Liam.

Cheers Shazza, I've been witnessing your moderating powers for a while :P thanks for the clean sweep, nice to be part of such a good forum!

[Liam_G]

Liam....If you want to experiment before you build then I would recommend you get some plumbing parts and some tubing and a few valves. If you can include a flow meter of some sort, even if only in the main pipe from the pump, better still.

I wanted to know more about the effects of parallel flow and of reducing flow in modern high flow blocks. Lets just say I was surprised by the results.

My test "bench"



What you are seeing are 22mm (3/4") feed and return with 15mm (1/2") branch pipes with tubes pushed on and held with worm drives. I have since added more valves so that I can isolate a single rig and remove with only a small fluid loss from the system.

I think you could do all of yours in 15mm for the purposes of testing and once the concept is proven or the individual paths tweaked then moving to a build inside a rig becomes just a matter of engineering a solution

Wow, nice setup. The advice is much appreciated and I'm glad I'm not out in the dark with my idea here.... Yeah, when I test this, I will be doing it with all blocks and rads in situ so I have all the same flow characteristics, same head and everything. Basically I will have the rig set up but I will throw a flow meter on each return from the 3 arms of the manifold, before returning to the reservoir.

My first test I will NOT use the tuned manifold and will just use 'Y' splitters to separate the flow after the CPU and see what the flow is like across the different blocks, like you said in a previous post it may just achieve a reasonable rate all on it's own without the need to tune it any further. After that I will test out a few different manifold paths that I design on Solidworks if it doesn't look like I have sufficient flow over all blocks without tuning.

The manifold design will be part of an acrylic midplate, so I can drop in custom manifolds to suit all of my, and possibly other peoples needs/loops if I decide to sell this case I am working on.

I'm trying to get the whole, ease of installation, ease of use, ease of draining, performance and aesthetics thing all worked into one by doing this, fingers crossed it works. Only problem right now is it will be a while before I have the funds to build this system, so you guys won't see my results for a while, but I will use the time well to continue refining and improving my design so it will be worth the wait.