Isogeometric Simulation of Thermal Expansion for Twin Screw Compressors

TL;DR

This paper applies Isogeometric Analysis to simulate thermal expansion in twin screw compressors, leveraging high smoothness for accurate geometry representation and estimating clearance contraction during operation.

Contribution

It introduces the use of IGA with B-splines and NURBS for thermal analysis of compressors, enhancing geometric accuracy and simulation precision.

Findings

IGA provides more accurate geometry modeling.

Clearance space contraction can be effectively estimated.

Open source G+Smo library facilitates implementation.

Abstract

Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) is a recently introduced computational approach intended to breach the gap between the Finite Element Analysis and the Computer Aided Design worlds. In this work, we apply it to numerically simulate thermal expansion of oil-free twin screw compressors in operation. High global smoothness of IGA leads to a more accurate representation of the compressor geometry. We utilize standard tri-variate B-splines to parametrize the rotors, while the casing is modeled exactly by using NURBS. We employ the Galerkin version of IGA to solve the thermal expansion problem in the stationary case. The results allow to estimate the contraction of the clearance space between the casing and the rotors. The implementation is based on the open source C++ library G+Smo. This work is supported by the European Union within the Project MOTOR: Multi-ObjecTive design Optimization of fluid eneRgy machines.