Journal article
Experimental and Numerical Investigation of a Miniature Additively Manufactured Vortex Tube
JOURNAL OF THERMAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS, Vol.13(2)
2021
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/116787
Abstract
Ranque-Hilsch vortex tubes are simple devices that can produce a cooling effect using compressed air. A key advantage of vortex tubes is the lack of moving solid parts; however, their efficiencies are relatively low. The present study focuses on the development of a miniature variable-diameter tube using additive manufacturing. A metal-based 3D printing technique was utilized to fabricate this vortex tube monolithically. Computational fluid dynamics simulations employing software star-ccm+ with a compressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach and the elliptic-blending lag k-epsilon turbulence model have been applied to model thermofluid processes inside the vortex tube, to good agreement with the experiment. A temperature decrease of 13.3 degrees C and a cooling power of approximately 4 W were experimentally achieved with a pressure ratio of 4 in the air at normal conditions. This result shows promise for the goal of utilizing additive manufacturing to design and build complex-geometry vortex tubes intended for use with cryogenic fluids.
Metrics
15 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Experimental and Numerical Investigation of a Miniature Additively Manufactured Vortex Tube
- Creators
- G WallaceC BungeJ LeachmanKI Matveev
- Publication Details
- JOURNAL OF THERMAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS, Vol.13(2)
- Academic Unit
- Mechanical and Materials Engineering, School of
- Identifiers
- 99900564301201842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article