TY - JOUR TI - Numerical investigation on flow behavior and energy separation in a micro-scale vortex tube AU - Rahbar Nader AU - Taherian Mohsen AU - Shateri Mostafa AU - Valipour Mohammad Sadegh JN - Thermal Science PY - 2015 VL - 19 IS - 2 SP - 619 EP - 630 PT - Article AB - 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.