Conference Year
2016
Keywords
compressors modeling, OOP, parallel computation, component heat transfer, 3D mesh mismatch
Abstract
The heat transport phenomenon in a hermetic reciprocating compressor is addressed in this work. This is far from straightforward. It involves several transient physical phenomena interacting to each other. The heat is exchanged between the refrigerant fluid and the solid parts of the compressor (suction muffler, cylinder head, crankcase, etc.). At the same time, the solid parts exchange heat to each other by means of conduction and radiation. Moreover, the phenomenon happens in non-symmetrical complex geometries and the solid parts are made of different materials. This is interesting from both the software engineering and the compressor design viewpoint. A parallel object-oriented software platform for the resolution of multiphysics problems is employed. This platform allows the use of partitioned strategies so that the compressor heat transport problem -a global problem- can be divided into several smaller parts -local problems-. This makes possible the use of multilevel modeling strategies for thermal systems analysis. Furthermore, in order to couple the several sub-problems in an integrated simulation, the platform provides data transfer tools -for matching and non-matching meshes- to exchange sub-domain state information. In particular, the work provides detailed information on the heat distribution and the temperature of the components of a test compressor. By means of comparative studies the thermal properties of some of its components are analyzed. This highlights the importance of choosing proper materials. For example, different suction muffler materials are tested to investigate their influence on the volumetric efficiency. Since the whole compressor is simulated, the consequences of altering specific component properties are also appreciated on the other components. In sum, the work presents illustrative numerical results of the three-dimensional heat transfer in a compressor that show the potential use of computer simulation to support design of components to attain feasibility and energy efficiency.