Summary

Scroll compressors are positive displacement machines of orbital motion that compress a gas by means of two conjugated spiral-shaped members. Such compressors are widely employed in air conditioning, refrigeration and water heating, due to its high reliability, low noise levels and high efficiency. Gas leakage and heat transfer that take place inside the gas pockets are the main thermodynamic irreversibilities of scroll compressors. Typical models and correlations available in the literature to predict the effect of both irreversibilities on the compressor performance are usually based on simplified flow conditions. As a consequence, there remains much uncertainty about such predictions for operating conditions found in actual applications. The study reported herein considers the numerical analysis of gas leakage and heat transfer in the compression chambers of scroll compressors. Numerical models based on differential formulation are developed to analyze the aforementioned phenomena in details, including the geometry of the wraps and the transient behavior of the compression process. Due to the particular geometry of the scroll wraps, an algorithm was developed to automatically adapt the computational mesh throughout the simulation. A low Reynolds turbulence model was employed to allow the numerical solution in the near wall region, which is critical for predictions of shear stress and heat transfer at the walls. The study covers a wide range of operating conditions and geometries expressed as dimensionless parameters, allowing new correlations to be proposed for estimates of gas leakage and convective heat transfer in scroll compressors. These correlations so obtained are implemented into a comprehensive lumped simulation model and applied to analyze the thermodynamic efficiency of the compressor in different operating conditions.

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