THERMAL SCIENCE

International Scientific Journal

Nader Rahbar

,

Mohsen Taherian

,

Mostafa Shateri

,

Mohammad Sadegh Valipour

NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION ON FLOW BEHAVIOR AND ENERGY SEPARATION IN A MICRO-SCALE VORTEX TUBE

ABSTRACT
There are a few experimental and numerical studies on the behaviour of micro-scale vortex tubes. The intention of this work is to investigate the energy separation phenomenon in a micro-scale vortex tube by using the computational fluid dynamic. The flow is assumed as steady, turbulent, compressible ideal gas, and the shear-stress transport sst k-w is used for modeling of turbulence phenomenon. The results show that 3-D CFD simulation is more accurate than 2-D axisymmetric one. Moreover, optimum cold-mass ratios to maximize the refrigeration-power and isentropicefficiency are evaluated. The results of static temperature, velocity magnitude and pressure distributions show that the temperature-separation in the micro-scale vortex tube is a function of kinetic-energy variation and air-expansion in the radial direction.
KEYWORDS
Ranque–Hilsch tube, micro-scale vortex tube, CFD modeling, energy separation, temperature separation, shear-stress transport turbulence model
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2012-03-16
PAPER REVISED: 2012-07-10
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2012-10-24
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI120316206R
CITATION EXPORT: view in browser or download as text file
THERMAL SCIENCE YEAR 2015, VOLUME 19, ISSUE Issue 2, PAGES [619 - 630]
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Numerical investigation on flow behavior and energy separation in a micro-scale vortex tube

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