International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414

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International Journal of Refrigeration

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijrefrig

Unsteady characteristic and flow mechanism of a scroll compressor

with novel discharge port for electric vehicle air conditioning
Rongchao Zhao a, Weihua Li a,∗, Weilin Zhuge b,∗
a
School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China
b
State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Scroll compressor is a key component of the air conditioner/heat pump system in electric vehicle. This
Received 12 February 2020 paper focuses on the impacts of discharge port design on the transient performance and flow mecha-
Revised 18 June 2020
nism of the scroll compressor. A three-dimensional unsteady computational fluid dynamic model is es-
Accepted 20 June 2020
tablished and validated. The computational domain includes inlet duct, scroll working chamber, discharge
Available online 24 June 2020
port, check valve, plenum chamber and outlet duct. R134a is used as the working fluid. The impacts of
Keywords: the position of the conventional circular port on the transient characteristic and flow loss mechanism
Scroll compressor of the scroll compressor are studied. It is found that large pressure difference between the two central
Air conditioning chambers is resulted from discharging time difference of the two chambers. It inevitably leads to under
Discharge port compression in downside chamber and over compression in the upside chamber at designed condition.
Unsteady flow The conventional circular discharge port cannot address this problem. Therefore, a novel discharge port
Asymmetry
with a tail is proposed to retard the discharge time of the downside chamber and advance that of the up-
Computational fluid dynamic
side chamber. It is found that the isentropic efficiency of the scroll compressor is improved by 2.4%. The
maximum pressure unbalance between the upside chamber and downside chamber is reduced by 50%.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.

Caractéristique et mécanisme d’écoulement non permanent d’un compresseur à

spirales avec un nouvel orifice de refoulement pour le conditionnement d’air des
véhicules électriques

Mots-clés: Compresseur à spirale; Conditionnement d’air; Orifice de refoulement; Écoulement non permanent; Asymétrie; Mécanique numérique des fluides

1. Introduction 1.1. Overview of the methods to improve scroll performance

The energy consumption of air conditioning or heat pump has
a great impact on the driving mileage of electric vehicles. It is
shown that the mileage reductions caused by cooling and heating
can be up to 16.7% and 50.0%, respectively (Qi, 2014; Qin et al.,
2015). Therefore, it is meaningful to improve the coefficient of per-
formance of the air conditioning or heat pump system. Scroll com-
pressor is a key component in air conditioning or heat pump sys-
tem, which consumes most of the energy. Thus it is important to
improve the performance of the scroll compressor.
∗ required, leading to over compression loss.
Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: whlee@scut.edu.cn (W. Li), zhugewl@tsinghua.edu.cn (W.
Zhuge).
The performance of the scroll machine (efficiency, flow rate,
pressure ratio and etc.) is closely related to the geometry param-
eters. These parameters must be well designed to minimize the
leakage loss, friction loss, flow loss and etc. Among these losses,
the under compression and over compression are losses related to
the operation condition of the scroll. When the scroll discharge
pressure is lower than the back pressure, the gas flows reversely
from the discharge port to the working chamber, leading to under-
compression loss. When the scroll discharge pressure is higher
than the back pressure, more compression work is consumed than
Emhardt et al. (2018) summarized the studies on the influences
of the scroll geometrical parameters on the scroll performance. It

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2020.06.022
0140-7007/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.
404 R. Zhao, W. Li and W. Zhuge / International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414
is generally accepted that increasing the base circle radius results
in larger flow rate and lower mechanical efficiency (due to larger
friction loss) (Ishii et al., 1996). Larger scroll profile height leads to
lower radial leakages but higher flank leakages, which affect the ef-
ficiency significantly (Tateishi et al., 2006). To improve the pressure
ratio, the scroll profile length can be increased (Clemente et al.,
2012).
In addition to the basic geometric design, the following aspects
attract lots of attentions from the academic and industrial area,
with aims to improve the performance of the scroll.
• Scroll tip geometry
The inner involute and outer involute of the scroll need to be
connected at the starting position, forming the scroll tip. There are
basically three options to generate the scroll tip geometry, includ-
ing single arc (Blunier et al., 2009), dual arc (Bell et al., 2012) and
perfect meshing profile (PMP) (Hirano et al., 1990; Hirano et al.,
2011). The scroll tip geometry affects the volume of the central
chambers and thus influences the built-in volume ratio of the
scroll compressor. In addition, the scroll tip affects the effective
flow area to the discharge port when the scroll orbits, which in-
fluences the flow losses during the discharging process. The PMP
is characterized by two arc curves and a single line, which can ob-
tain larger built-in volume ratio (Wang et al., 2019).
• Variable wall thicknesses
With variable wall thickness, higher pressure ratio can be ob-
tained with reduced scroll length. As a result, the overall tip leak-
age area and residence time of the gas in the machine can be re-
duced, leading to less leakage. Bush and Beagle (Bush and Bea-
gle, 1992; Bush et al., 1994) provided a general relationship to gen-
erate scroll profiles with variable wall thickness. The scroll pro-
file length was reduced from 5.5 revolutions to 2.5 revolutions by
varying the wall thickness. Bin et al. (2017a, 2017b) developed a
thermodynamic model for a variable wall thickness scroll compres-
sor, which could accurately predict the output power, mass flow
rate and discharge temperature. Emhardt et al. (2019) disclosed the
flow details in a scroll expander with variable wall thickness by
three-dimensional transient CFD method.
• Vapor injection/bypass hole
The purpose of vapor injection/bypass is to adjust the capac-
ity of the scroll machine at off-design condition. For heat pump
system, the heating capacity decreases as the outdoor tempera-
ture decreases due to a reduction in the refrigerant flow rate with
a lower suction pressure. Under compression occurs in the scroll
compressor under this condition. To resolve this problem, vapor
from condenser can be injected into the scroll compressor to in-
crease the flow rate and exit pressure. The diameter (Cho et al.,
2012), angle, area (Kim et al., 2017) and number (Kang et al., 2018)
of the injection holes have significantly impacts on the scroll per-
formance. In contrast with vapor injection, Wang et al. (2012) pro-
posed suction gas bypass to reduce the heating/cooling capacity
under partial load conditions.
1.2. The propose of novel discharger port
The main contribution of the current work is related the flow
mechanism in the discharge port. Therefore, the studies related
to the flow in the discharge port and central working chambers
are introduced in this subsection. For a scroll compressor, the gas
in the central chambers discharges through the discharge port.
The interactions between the scroll and discharge port resulting in
complex three-dimensional unsteady flow in the region. To obtain
a deep insight into the unsteady flow mechanism, studies based on
3-D computation fluid dynamic method were carried out.
Cui (Cui, 20 06, 20 07; Cui and Sauls, 2008) firstly carried out 3D
unsteady flow simulation on scroll compressor for air condition-
ing. It was found that asymmetric distributions of the mass, veloc-
ity, pressure, and temperature were found in the symmetric com-
pression chambers (Cui, 2006). Over compression was observed
in the simulation and reduced the efficiency of the compressor.
A dummy port structure was proposed to reduce the asymmetry
flow of the gas pockets on the two sides and made the gas go-
ing through discharge port easier (Cui and Sauls, 2008). Xiao et al.
(Xiao and Liu, 2014) carried out 2D and 3D transient simulation
for the scroll compressor and obtained flow details in the scroll.
Sun et al. (2017) found that the asymmetrical suction structure of
the scroll compressor also resulted in asymmetrical pressure in the
two symmetrical chambers. However, the impacts of asymmetrical
suction structure on the discharge process were not discussed.
Apart from scroll compressor, the unsteady flows in scroll ex-
pander for ORC system were also studied based on CFD method.
Song and Wei et al. (Song et al., 2015; Wei et al., 2015; Song et al.,
2018) investigated the unsteady flow details in a scroll expander
for ORC waste heat recovery. It was shown that the location of
the suction port has a vital role on the transient performances of
the expander, which was caused by the blocking effect of the or-
biting scroll tip (Song et al., 2015). Asymmetric pressure distribu-
tion between symmetric working chambers were also found, which
was resulted from the asymmetric arrangement of the suction port.
Chang et al. (2014) proposed cut-off scroll tips, which could reduce
the blocking effects of the scroll tip and alleviate the unbalanced
pressure distribution in the symmetric chamber.
The above studies all shows that the asymmetric pressure dis-
tribution occurs in the central working chambers in scroll ma-
chines (compressor and expander). However, the impacts of the
discharge port design on the scroll transient performance and flow
are not fully revealed. Conventionally, the shape of the discharge
port is designed as a circle. However, the circular design cannot
address the asymmetric flow problem in the scroll machine. In the
current study, a novel discharge port with irregular shape is pro-
posed to alleviate the asymmetry and improve the compressor ef-
ficiency.
Firstly, the scroll basic geometry and CFD method are intro-
duced in the paper. Then the impacts of the location of the circular
port on the transient characteristic and flow of the scroll compres-
sor will be presented and analyzed. Based on the analysis, the de-
sign guideline for the discharge port can be obtained. Lastly, the
impacts of the novel discharge port on the scroll performance will
be presented.
2. Numerical method
2.1. Geometry description
The scroll compressor is applied in air conditioning for an elec-
tric bus. The main geometry parameters of the scroll profiles can
be seen in Fig. 1 and Table 1.The scroll profiles are generated us-
ing involute profiles based on Eqs. (1) and (2). The coordinates x
and y are functions of the base circle radius Rb , involute angles φ
and α . The tip of the scroll profile is modified with PMP method
(Hirano et al., 1990; Hirano et al., 2011). The radii of the two arcs
(ri and ro ) are 7.55 mm and 1.95 mm, respectively. The two arcs are
connected by a tangent line. The diameter of the circular discharge
port is 12 mm and its center is located in (−5.4 mm, −3.3 mm).
x = Rb cos φ + Rb (φ − α ) sin φ (1)
y = Rb sin φ − Rb (φ − α ) cos φ (2)
The relative positions of the orbiting scroll and fixed scroll at
different times are also shown in Fig. 1. The orbiting scroll (red)
 R. Zhao, W. Li and W. Zhuge / International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414 405

Fig. 1. The geometric parameters of the fixed scroll and the relative positions of the orbiting scroll at different moments.

Table 1 Table 2
The main geometric parameters of the scroll compressor. the mesh information.

Parameter Symbol Unit Value No. subdomain elements nodes

base radius Rb mm 3.183 1 inlet duct 30 816 11 033

eccentric distance e mm 5.5 2 working chamber 1 071 927 515 892
inside involute angle αi rad 0.707 3 discharge port 16 640 15 249
starting angle of the inside involute φ i, s rad 4.887 4 valve gap 3 872 1 924
ending angle of the inside involute φ i, e rad 16.528 5 plenum chamber 63 200 58 696
outside involute angle αo rad −0.707 6 outlet duct 12 104 11 033
starting angle of the outside involute φ o, s rad 1.745
ending angle of the outside involute φ o, e rad 16.528
diameter of inside arc ri mm 7.55
diameter of outside arc ro mm 1.95 on the side face first and then extruded to generate volume mesh.
scroll height H mm 34.3
discharge port height hp mm 9.2
The minimum and maximum length scales of the deforming mesh
maximum displacement of the check valve hv mm 4.5 are set as 0.0 0 05 m and 0.002 m, respectively. The maximum face
discharge port diameter dp mm 12 skewness is set as 0.4. The grid is remeshed at each time step
when the above conditions are not satisfied
The mesh of other subdomains is created using hexahedral grid,
orbits at the clockwise direction. As the scroll orbits, gas is suc- which can easily obtain high quality mesh. The mesh statistics at
tioned from periphery into the chamber and compressed. When initial moment can be seen in Table 2. It should be noted that the
the central chamber is connected to the discharge port and the elements and nodes in subdomain 2 and 4 changed with the time.
pressure is higher than the back pressure, the gas will discharge At initial moment, the grid size near the wall is small and it be-
to the plenum chamber. comes larger when it is far away from the wall. As such, the calcu-
lation time can be reduced at the beginning. However, after 1–2 or-
2.2. CFD model and validation biting cycles, the grid in the deforming zone becomes significantly
smaller. Fig. 2 also presents the mesh variable in the 6th orbiting
The whole calculation domain is consisted of 6 subdomains, in- cycle when simulation converges. The radial gap between the fixed
cluding inlet duct, scroll working chamber, discharge port, valve scroll profile and orbiting scroll profile at the mating point is set
gap, plenum chamber and outlet duct, as shown in Fig. 2. The as 0.12 mm. The flank gap is not considered in the simulation.
numbers 1–6 are used to denote the six subdomains, respectively. The structure of the check valve is simplified in the study
The mesh of each subdomain is generated separately first and then to make the simulation less complicated. It is assumed that the
assembled in ICEM CFD, which is a module specific for mesh gen- wall of the check valve moves vertically as the gas pushes away
eration in commercial software ANSYS. Due to the movement of the valve during the discharge process. As the back pressure is
the orbiting scroll and check valve, the mesh in subdomains 2 and higher than the pressure in discharge port, the moving wall will
4 will be deformed with time. Therefore, the subdomains of the be pushed back vertically to the discharge port, in case of reverse
working chamber and valve gap is created using wedge grid, which flow. The moving wall will not be deformed during the process.
is suitable for dynamic mesh. Smoothing and remeshing tech- The simplification is based on the fact that the maximum equiva-
niques are adopted in the dynamic mesh control for subdomains lent flow area is kept the same.
2 and 4 to obtain high quality mesh. In the smoothing method, The interface conditions are used to connect different subdo-
Spring/Laplace/Boundary Layer method is chosen. In the remesh- mains. The movement of the orbiting scroll and check valve are
ing method, 2.5D method is applied. The mesh will be remeshed defined in UDF function, which can be complied in ANSYS Fluent.
406 R. Zhao, W. Li and W. Zhuge / International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414

Fig. 2. The mesh of the calculation domain.

The total pressure and total temperature are imposed at the in- 
let boundary and static pressure is given at the outlet boundary. Minst dt
Mav e = (4)
The walls are set as adiabatic, non-slip boundaries. Therefore, heat T
transfer is not considered in the study. As a result, the predicted 
Tinst dt
discharged temperature maybe lower and compression efficiency Tave = (5)
T
maybe higher when heat transferred from motor coil and scroll
assembly is not considered. Although the neglect of heat transfer where T in the denominator represents the period of the orbiting
in the simulation will lead to deviation, the focus of the study is scroll. Tave and Tinst are the averaged and instantaneous tempera-
the discharge flows. The heat transfer at high speed condition will ture, respectively.
be minimized significantly. Therefore, the CFD numerical approach The volumetric efficiency (ηv ) of the scroll compressor is a
can still be used to investigate the impact of the discharge port on function of actual volume flow rate and theoretical volume flow
the aerodynamic performance of the scroll compressor. rate, which is given in Eq. (6).
RNG k-ɛ model with standard wall functions are applied to V˙ actual 30m˙ ave
model the turbulence flows. The time step is 2.4 × 10−5 s, corre- ηv = = (6)
V˙ theory π nVs ρin
sponding to 0.72° crankshaft angle of the orbiting scroll. Pressure-
based solver and coupled scheme are adopted to solve the physical where n is the rotating speed, ρ in is the gas density at the inlet
problem. In coupled scheme, the momentum equation and Conti- and Vs is the volume of the suction chambers when the suction
nuity equation are solved in a coupled way, which required more process ends.
computational memory. However, faster convergence can be ob- The compression efficiency (η) is a function of theoretical
tained, resulting into less computational time in the transient flow power (Ptheory ) and actual power (Pactual ), as given in Eqs. (7)–
simulation. (9). The specific enthalpy at the compressor exit hexit, s is obtained
Real gas model for working fluid R134a is applied in the sim- based on isentropic compression process.
ulation. The thermodynamic properties of R134a are compiled
from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) library. Ptheory = m˙ ave (hexit,s − hin ) (7)
When NIST library is applied, divergence is more likely to occur. To
2π n
obtained stable convergence, the flow Courant number and Relax- Pactual = ωMave = Mav e (8)
ation factors need to be reduced. The flow Courant number is set 60
as 80 and explicit relaxation factors for momentum and pressure Ptheory 30m˙ ave (hexit,s − hin )
are set as 0.4 in the study. η= = (9)
Pactual π n Mav e
The averaged mass flow rate (m˙ ave ), torque (Mave ) and discharge
temperature (Tave ) are calculated using Eq. (3)–(5), respectively. where ω is angular velocity (1/s) and n is rotating speed (rpm).
The performance of the electric scroll compressor is obtained
in test bench, as shown in Fig. 3. The temperature and pressure
 at the inlet (point 1) and exit (point 2) of the scroll, the inlet of
m˙ inst dt
m˙ ave = (3) the expansion valve (point 3) are measured in the experiment. The
T
 R. Zhao, W. Li and W. Zhuge / International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414
Fig. 3. Schematic of the test bench and electric scroll compressor.
specific enthalpy of R134a at these points is obtained according to
h = h(T, p). The mass flow rate of R134a is measured in calorime-
ter. A secondary fluid is stored in the calorimeter and the wall is
heat insulated. The refrigerant R134a evaporates in the calorime-
ter and absorbs heat from the heater. The temperature and pres-
sure in the calorimeter are kept the same during the measure-
ment. When heat leakage is considered, the mass flow rate (m˙ 1 ) of
the refrigerant can be obtained according to heat balance, as given
in Eq. (8).
i + F (ta − ts )
m˙ 1 =
( h1 − h3 )
In Eq. (10), i is heat rate of the electric heater, F is coefficient
of the heat leakage, ta is the ambient temperature, ts is the satu-
rated temperature of the secondary fluid in the calorimeter and h
is the specific enthalpy of R134a.
In the condenser, the heat of the refrigerant is absorbed by liq-
uid water. The condensing temperature is adjusted by a heater up-
stream the condenser. The water temperatures at the inlet and out-
let of the condenser are measured and the water mass flow rate is
also recorded. The mass flow rate (m˙ 1 ) of the refrigerant is cal-
ibrated using Eq. (11). The differences between m˙ 1 and m˙ 2 are
407
within 2% in the experiment.
m˙ w c p (to − ti ) + 
m˙ 2 = (11)
( h2 − h3 )
where m˙ w is the mass flow rate of the water, cp is the specific heat
capacity of the water, to and ti are the inlet and outlet temperature
of the water respectively,  is the rate of heat leakage to the
ambient.
The power consumed by the electric scroll compressor is calcu-
lated using the voltage and current. The calculation of volumetric
efficiency in the experiment also uses Eq. (6). The compression effi-
ciency of the electric scroll compressor in the experiment is shown
(10)
in Eq. (12). Therefore, the electro mechanical losses are included.
m˙ 1 (h2,s − h1 )
η= (12)
UI
where U is voltage and I is current.
Due to the limitation of the calorimeter, the maximum cooling
capacity of the experiment system is limited. Only the performance
of the scroll compressor at 20 0 0 rpm and 30 0 0 rpm are measured.
The suction pressure and discharge pressure are kept at 377 kPa
and 1470 kPa, respectively. The degrees of superheat and subcool-
ing are 11.09 °C and 8.3 °C, respectively.
The comparisons between the experimental and simulation re-
sults are illustrated in Fig. 4. It is shown that the predicted volu-
408 R. Zhao, W. Li and W. Zhuge / International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414

Fig. 4. Validation of the simulation model.

metric efficiency and compression efficiency at low speed condi-

tions are significantly lower than experimental values. It is mainly
because the radial gap is set as 0.12 mm in the simulation, which is
larger than the real value. As a result, the radial leakage in the sim-
ulation is greatly larger than the real value, which leads to lower
volumetric efficiency. The gas is recompressed in the chamber due
to large leakage, resulting in lower compression efficiency. Even
though 0.12 mm is significantly larger than the real value, it is still
difficult for the mesh generation and simulation in ANSYS Fluent,
since the dynamic mesh technique for scroll is not so mature. Set-
ting up a larger gap in the simulation is a compromise of the mesh
number, quality and calculation time. As presented in some previ-
ous study, the radial gap is set as 0.15 mm (Chang et al., 2014) and
0.2 mm (Liu et al., 2018) in the simulation. It is because as the
gap decreases, the mesh size decrease significantly and the mesh
number increases greatly. In addition, the time step size decreases
Fig. 5. Three different positions of the circular discharge port.
linearly with the mesh size in case of negative grid during the dy-
namic mesh generation. As a result, the time step number becomes
significantly larger and the simulation time becomes unacceptable.
3. The impacts of the circular discharge port position
Structured dynamic mesh are proposed to precisely capture the
leakage flow. In these studies, the radial gap can be 0.008 mm
In this chapter, the impacts of the position of the circular dis-
(Sun et al., 2017) and the flank gap can be 0.05 mm (Wang et al.,
charge port on the scroll compressor transient performance will
2015) in the simulation. The mesh quality is also very good. How-
be presented. The asymmetric characteristic of the scroll chambers
ever, these techniques have not been applied on the commercial
is observed and the mechanism leading to the asymmetry is dis-
software, such as ANSYS.
cussed. The findings provides guidelines for the optimization of the
However, as the rotating speed increases, the efficiencies in-
discharge port design in the next step.
crease greatly, which more approve to the practical values. The
The influences of three positions are investigated in the cur-
compression efficiencies of the scroll compressor are 34.2%, 45.9%,
rent work, as shown in Fig. 5. Apart from the baseline position, the
58.3% and 66.45% at 20 0 0 rpm, 30 0 0 rpm, 40 0 0 rpm and
other two positions are obtained by translating the baseline posi-
50 0 0 rpm, respectively. It is because the residence time of the
tion at the x-axis direction by 2 mm and 4 mm, respectively. The
gas in the compression chamber decreases largely as the speed in-
two central working chambers are denoted as upside chamber and
creases. As a result, the radial leakage drops down significantly at
downside chamber respectively, as shown in Fig. 5.
higher speed conditions. The predicted efficiencies are lower than
The impacts of the circular port position on the transient torque
the experimental values. It is mainly because larger radial gap is
and mass flow rate are shown in Fig. 6. The normalised torque and
set in the simulation model. As a result, the loss caused by leakage
mass flow rate are the ratios between the transient value and the
flow is over estimated, which leads to lower efficiency. The review
baseline period-averaged value, as given in Eqs. (13) and (14).
study in (Emhardt et al., 2018) shows that the isentropic efficien-
cies of the most scroll machines are in the range of 60–75%. There- Minst
fore, the simulation results at 50 0 0 rpm condition are considered Minst,norm = (13)
Mave,baseline
to be reasonable and chosen as the baseline for comparison. The
analysis and discussions in the following chapters are all obtained m˙ inst
m˙ inst,norm = (14)
at 50 0 0 rpm condition. The authors also admit the limitation of m˙ ave,baseline
the current study cannot precisely capture the leakage flow in the
scroll. However, the study mainly focuses on the unsteady flow in In Fig. 6, attentions should be given to three moments, includ-
the discharge port. To make the simulation work become feasible, ing 15%T, 37%T and 45%T.
it is necessary to simplify the gap. At 15%T, the torque in the baseline scroll is significantly higher
than the cases x-2 mm and x-4 mm. Also, the reverse flow in the
 R. Zhao, W. Li and W. Zhuge / International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414 409

Fig. 6. The transient troque of the orbiting scroll and mass flow rate at discharge port.

Fig. 7. The pressure in the scroll compressor at 15% and 45% of the cycle period.

baseline is the largest and earliest in the three cases. As the cir-
cular discharge port move to the right, the reverse flow alleviates
and the starting time retards. It is because the discharge beginning
time in the downside chamber retards as the discharge port moves
to the right.
The reverse flow is caused by under compression occurs in the
downside chamber. As illustruted in Fig. 7, the downside cham-
ber of the baseline scroll connects to the discharge port earlier.
At this moment, the pressure in the discharge port is higher than
that in the downside chamber. As a result, the gas flows reversely
from the discharge port into the downside chamber, leading to
higher compression work in downside chamber. It can be seen
in Fig. 7 that the pressure asymmetry appears in the two central
chambers of the baseline case. As for the case x-4 mm, the pres-
sures in the upside chamber and downside chamber are almost
equal. This is bacause the connecting area between the downside
chamber and discharge port is still small at the moment. As a re-
sult, the reverse flow is relatively limited.
410 R. Zhao, W. Li and W. Zhuge / International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414

Fig. 8. 3-D streamline in the central compression chamber at 15% of the cycle period.

At 45%T, the transient torque in the basline scroll is evidently

lower than the cases of “x-2mm” and “x-4mm”. At the moment,
both the upside and downside chambers already connect to the
discharge port and discharge. Large effective flow area is required
to discharge the gas in the chambers. However, in the case x-
4 mm, large portion of the discharge port is blocked by the scroll
tip. As a result, the flow resistance becomes evidently larger than
that in the baseline. As a result, the pressure in the central cham-
ber of the x-4 mm case is higher than that of the baseline, lead-
ing to higher torque. In addition, it is also found that the pres-
sure in the upside chamber is significantly higher than that in the
downside chamber at 45%T, which leads to large over compression
loss. Since the discharge beginning times in the upside chamber
and downside chamber are different, under compression and over
compression inevitably happpen in the two chambers, repectively.
In the baseline case, the discharge beginning time for the down-
side and upside chambers are approximately 5%T and 33%T, re-
spectively. The asymmetry can be reduced if the time difference
becomes smaller.
The flow details in the central chamber and discharge port at
15%T are presented in Fig. 8. As for the baseline, a large portion of
the gas flow reversely form the discharge port into the downside
chamber. The high speed flows hit the side wall of the scroll and
generate a large vortex in the left side. The fluid speed drops down
as it mixes with the low momentum fluid in the chamber. Another
vortex occurs in the up-right zone of the downside chamber. In
conrast with the baseline, the reverse flows in the case x-4 mm
are significantly lower due to the limited flow area. The high sped
fluid slows down at the middle of the chamber and generates a
small vortex. Only a small portion of the fluid can reach the left
side wall of the scroll.
The impacts of the circular port position on the volumetric and
isentropic efficiencies of the scroll compressor are not significant,
as shown in Fig. 9. This conclusion is obvious and in consistent
with the torque curves in Fig. 6. Although the overall performances
are almost unchanged as the discharge port position changes, some
important findings is disclosed in the work. It provides the guide-
line for the port design in the next step.
4. The impacts of the novel discharge port
From the above analysis, it is known that the discharge be-
ginning time difference inevitably leads to under compression in
Fig. 9. The impacts of discharge port position on the overall performance of the
scroll compressor.
the downside chamber and over compression in the upside cham-
ber at designed condition. When the scroll compressor works at
over-compression condition, the extent of over compression in the
upside chamber will be larger than that in the downside cham-
ber. When it works at under-compression condition, the extent of
under compression in the downside chamber will be larger than
that in the upside chamber. Therefore, the discharge port should
be designed to retard the discharge beginning time of the down-
side chamber and advance that of the upside chamber. In addition,
the effective flow area needs be large enough when both of the
chambers are discharging, in order to reduce the flow resistance.
Based on these recognitions, a novel discharge port with a tail
is proposed in the paper, as shown in Fig. 10. The proposed dis-
charge port is composed of two parts, the main part and the tail.
The function of the tail is to advance the discharge beginning time
of the upside chamber and increase the effective flow area. Three
cases including long tail, short tail and no tail will be compared in
the following analysis.
As for the profile of the main part, the upper curve basically
overlaps with the profiles of the fixed scroll. The downside curve
is a part of the ellipse. The impacts of the half axis of the ellipse
(denoted as b) on the scroll performance are investigated in the
current study. A larger value of b contributes to larger effective
flow area. However, the discharge beginning time of the downside
chamber will be advanced. Therefore, the optimum value of b is a
 R. Zhao, W. Li and W. Zhuge / International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414 411

Fig. 10. The geometry of the novel discharge port.

Fig. 11. The impacts of the geometry on the transient torque of the orbiting scroll.

trade-off between the flow resistance loss and under-compression

loss.
The impacts of the tail design and b value on the transient
torque of the orbiting scroll are illustrated in Fig. 11. It is shown
that the torque of the scroll compressor with the novel port is
lower than that of baseline in the whole revolution period. At the
moment 45%T, the scroll with long tail obtains lowest torque, due
to the earliest discharging time of the upside chamber in the long
tail case. In addition, it is found that the peak torque also reduces
significantly when the novel port is adopted. The peak torque be-
comes lower and the corresponding peak time advances as the tail
becomes longer.
As the b value increases, the torque at 15%T increases signifi-
cantly as shown in Fig. 11. This is because larger value of b ad-
vances the discharging time of the downside chamber. As a result,
under compression becomes severer, leading to larger reverse flow
Fig. 12. the impacts of the novel discharge port geometry on the overall perfor-
from the discharge port. In addition, the peak torque increases and mance of the scroll compressor.
the corresponding time advances when the b value is larger. In ad-
dition, it is found that the torques with the novel port is signif-
icantly lower than the baseline during the period 30–100%T, re-
gardless the value of b. Therefore, it can be inferred that the port The flow area in the discharge port as a function of time is il-
with tail design can significantly reduce the peak pressure in the lustrated in Fig. 13. It can be seen that the maximum discharge
upside chamber. area of the novel port is significantly larger than that of the base-
The impacts of the geometric design of the discharge port on line port. In addition, the discharge timings are different in the
the overall performance of the scroll compressor are presented in two cases. In the baseline case, the downside chamber starts to
Fig. 12. The discharge port design has little impacts on the volu- discharge at approximately 5%T, while the upside chamber starts
metric efficiency, since it is mainly affected by the leakage flow to discharge at approximately 35%T. It should be noted that the
and the initial pressure when the suction process ends. The design discharge port is located in the downside chamber. Therefore, the
of the discharge port cannot effectively influence the leakage and discharge area of the upside chamber is actually small at the mo-
suction pressure. As for isentropic efficiency, the case with long tail ment. In the case of long tail-6 mm, both of the chambers start to
and b = 6 mm obtains highest efficiency, which is 2.4% higher than discharge at approximately 10%T.
that of the baseline. The improvement of the isentropic efficiency At the moment of 15%T, there are two branches of reverse flow
is resulted from lower torque of the orbiting scroll. from the port, as shown in Fig. 14. The upper one is injected into
412 R. Zhao, W. Li and W. Zhuge / International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414

Fig. 13. The discharge area in the port as a function of time.
the upside chamber through the tail of the port, which is small.
It can only reach the middle of the chamber. The downside one is
injected into the downside chamber through the main part of the
port. The injected flow slows down before it reaches the middle
of the chamber. The strength of the reverse flow is significantly
reduced, when compared with that in the baseline.
The flow details at the moment of 35%T can be seen Fig. 15. In
the baseline case, the gas in the upper chamber discharges through
the narrow gap between the two scroll tips. As a result, high speed
flows are observed in the gap and large flow loss occurs in the re-
gion. In the case of long tail-6 mm, the gas in the upside cham-
ber can discharge through the tail, resulting in lower flow loss and
lower pressure in the upside chamber. As a result, the over com-
pression loss in the upside chamber is reduced.
The instantaneous pressures in the two central chambers are
compared in Fig. 16. In the baseline case, the pressure in the down-
side chamber starts to be higher than that in upside chamber at
approximately 10%T. However, the pressure in the upside chamber
overtakes that in the downside chamber later. The largest pressure
unbalance occurs at 33.5%T, when the normalized pressure in up-
side chamber is 0.34 higher than that in the downside chamber.
In the case of long tail-6 mm, the pressures start to be differ-
ent at approximately 17%T. The largest pressure unbalance occurs
at 33%T, when the normalized pressure in upside chamber is 0.17
higher than that in the downside chamber. The largest pressure
unbalance is reduced by 50% with novel port, when compared with
that in the baseline. Besides, the peak pressure in the case of long
tail-6 mm is 3.8% lower than that in the baseline.
The normalized pressure at the outlet boundary of the scroll is
3.9. It can be seen from Fig. 16 that the instantaneous pressure in
the working chamber is significantly higher than 3.9. Therefore, the
pressure difference between the working chamber and discharge
chamber is still large, which is resulted from the flow resistant in
the discharge port. Therefore, there are still potential to further re-
duce the loss in the port.

5. Conclusions

Scroll compressor is a key component of the air condi-

tioner/heat pump system in electric vehicle and affects the driving
Fig. 14. The 3-D streamline in the central compression chamber at 15%T (long tail- mileage significantly. In the paper, a three-dimensional unsteady
6 mm case). computational fluid dynamic model is established to investigate
the impacts of discharge port design on the transient performance

Fig. 15. 3-D streamline in the central compression chamber at 35% of the cycle period.
 R. Zhao, W. Li and W. Zhuge / International Journal of Refrigeration 118 (2020) 403–414
Fig. 16. The instantaneous pressure in the central chambers.
and flow mechanism of a scroll compressor. R134a is used as the
working fluid. Firstly, the impacts of the position of the conven-
tional circular port on the transient characteristic and flow loss
mechanism are studied. Then, based on the analysis, a novel dis-
charge port is proposed to improve the efficiency of the scroll com-
pressor. The following conclusions can be drawn.
(1) Even though the scroll compressor as a whole operates at de-
sign condition, the gas in the downside chamber is under-
compression and the gas in the upside chamber is over-
compression. The pressure asymmetry in the two central cham-
bers is caused by the discharging time difference. The gas flows
reversely from the discharge port into the downside cham-
ber due to negative pressure gradient when discharging begins.
Large vortexes are generated in the downside chamber.
(2) The position of the circular discharge port has little impacts
on the overall volumetric and isentropic efficiency of the scroll
compressor. However, it affects the transient torque and mass
flow rate significantly by influencing the discharge beginning
time of the downside chamber and the effective flow area.
As the circular port moves to the right, the discharging time of
the downside chamber retards. As a result, the torque at 15%T mo-
ment reduces significantly due to smaller reverse flow. However,
the blocking effect of the scroll tip at 45%T enhances, leading to
larger flow resistance and higher torque at this moment.
(1) A novel discharge port with a tail is proposed to retard the dis-
charge beginning time of the downside chamber, advance that
of the upside chamber and reduce the blocking effect of the
scroll tip. The impacts of the geometric parameters of the novel
port on the scroll performance are evaluated. The case with
long tail and b = 6 mm obtains the optimum performance and
lowers the transient torque during the whole revolution pe-
riod. The reverse flow is alleviated significantly in the downside
chamber. The isentropic efficiency of the scroll compressor is
improved by 2.4%. The maximum pressure unbalance between
the upside chamber and downside chamber is reduced by 50%.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
413
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Science and Technology Program of
Guangzhou (Grant No. 201804010129), National Key Research and
Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFB0106502),
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.
51606070), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province
(Grant No. 2017A030313328) and Fundamental Research Funds for
the Central Universities (Grant No. 2019MS065).
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be
found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2020.06.022.
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