Experimental and Numerical Studies in a Vortex Tube

The present investigation deals with the study of the internal flow phenomena of the counter flow type vortex tube using experimental testing and numerical simulation. Visualization was carried out using the surface tracing method, injecting dye on the vortex tube wall using a needle. Vortex tube is made of acrylic to visualize the surface particle tracing and the input air pressure was varied from 0.1 MPa to 0.3 MPa. The experimentally visualized results on the tube show that there is an apparent sudden changing of the trajectory on the vortex tube wall which was observed in every experimental test case. This may indicate the stagnation position of the vortex flow. The visualized stagnation position moves towards the vortex generator with increase in cold flow ratio and input pressure. Three-dimensional computational study is also conducted to obtain more detailed flow information in the vortex tube. Calculated total pressure, static pressure and total temperature distributions in the vortex tube were in good agreement with the experimental data. The computational particle trace on the vortex tube wall is very similar to that observed in experiments.