City Research Online

Abstract

The push for having more reliable and efficient positive displacement machines (both compressors and expanders) for vapor compression and power generation (e.g., ORCs) applications has moved researchers to an always more spread employment of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). In particular, twin screw compressors, because of their high efficiency compared to other compressor types, have received interest over the last years. The numerical analysis of such machines is challenging: the deforming working chambers are very difficult to be correctly replicated. The relative motion of the rotors and the variation of the gaps during machine operation are few of the major difficulties in implementing reliable CFD models. A custom mesh generation algorithm is therefore often required for sumulating the machine operation.

In this work, SCORG-V5.2.2 was used to generate the meshes of the deforming domain around rotating parts of the machines. The open-source software OpenFOAM-v1606+ is then employed to compute the flow field associated with the operation of the twin screw. The coupling of the two tools has been carried out in this work, applying the methodology to a twin screw machine.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Subjects:	T Technology > TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Engineering

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