Use of CFD to Investigate Flow Characteristics and Oil Distribution Inside an Oil-injected Screw Compressor

Abstract

The well-developed CAE tools are used to investigate flow characteristics and oil distribution inside an oil-injected screw compressor. The flow field of gas mixed with oil is calculated by ANSYS CFX. TwinMesh generates high quality hexahedral grids for the compression chambers. There are two cases studied in this study. In the first case, the compressor models under four loading conditions are analyzed. The pressure curve is used to see if the designed built-in volume index is appropriate. In the second case, the compressor models under oil-free and oil-injected conditions are analyzed. The pressure gradients on rotor surfaces and velocity vector fields are used to describe the effects of lubrication and sealing in the sealing line gap, the tip gap, and the outlet end gap of rotors. The designer could optimize the slider and know if the oil is properly distributed in each gap.