CFD Simulation of a Dry Scroll Vacuum Pump Including Leakage Flows
One challenge for the numerical simulation of a dry scroll vacuum pump is the discretization of the chamber volume, which changes with time. In addition, the flow characteristics are very complex including the leakage flow caused by radial and axial gaps between the rotors and the housing. For engineers and designers it is imperative to understand the influence of such leakage flows on the efficiency of the dry scroll vacuum pump. This paper describes the workflow for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) of a dry scroll vacuum pump and shows some preliminary results. The computational grids for the time dependent flow volume are generated by the grid generator TwinMesh. The meshing software generates and optimises all necessary grids for each time step prior to the actual simulation and calculates the mesh quality to assure high quality numerical results. Furthermore, the grid generation accurately considers axial gaps. The transient numerical simulations are performed by the commercial CFD software code ANSYS CFX, which is able to handle complex flow characteristics. The simulations consider compressibility, turbulence, and heat transfer effects using ideal gas properties for the fluid. The pressure ratio between inlet and outlet is varied as well as the gap size. The results are compared with analytical methods. This paper shows time dependent information such as pressure, velocity, and temperature for specific locations in the chamber volume and also integral values such as power, torque, and mass flow. Finally, cross-sectional views are presented for different positions and time steps.
CFD simulation of a dry scroll vacuum pump with clearances, solid heating and thermal deformation
Although dry scroll vacuum pumps (DSPV) are essential devices in many different industrial processes, the CFD simulation of such pumps is not widely used and often restricted to simplified cases due to its complexity: The working principle with a fixed and an orbiting scroll leads to working chambers that are changing in time and are connected through moving small radial and axial clearances in the range of 10 to 100 μm. Due to the low densities and low mass flow rates in vacuum pumps, it is important to include heat transfer towards and inside the solid components. Solid heating is very slow compared to the scroll revolution speed and the gas behaviour, thus a special workflow is necessary to reach the working conditions in reasonable simulation times. The resulting solid temperature is then used to compute the thermal deformation, which usually results in gap size changes that influence leakage flows. In this paper, setup steps and results for the simulation of a DSVP are shown and compared to theoretical and experimental results. The time-varying working chambers are meshed with TwinMesh, a hexahedral meshing programme for positive displacement machines. The CFD simulation with ANSYS CFX accounts for gas flow with compressibility and turbulence effects, conjugate heat transfer between gas and solids, and leakage flows through the clearances. Time-resolved results for torques, chamber pressure, mass flow, and heat flow between gas and solids are shown, as well as time- and space-resolved results for pressure, velocity, and temperature for different operating conditions of the DSVP.
Laminar heat or mass transfer in rectangular channels and in cylindrical tubes for fully developed flow: comparison of solutions obtained for various boundary conditions
Abstract A comparison is made of results obtained with various boundary conditions at the wall of the channels. By comparing blood Sherwood numbers for finite wall resistance with those for constant concentration boundary condition only a small variation is found for various points along the blood channel.