International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504

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International Journal of Refrigeration

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

Impact of micro-grooves in scroll wrap tips on the performance of a

trans-critical CO2 scroll compressor
Siyu Zheng, Mingshan Wei∗, Chenxing Hu, Panpan Song, Ran Tian, Yaohong Li, Jixian Sun,
Ding Wu
School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

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

Article history: Radial leakage was commonly regarded as the primary factor restricting the aero-thermodynamic per-
Received 6 December 2020 formance of scroll compressors. In this paper, a passive flow control approach of micro-grooves in scroll
Revised 21 May 2021
wrap tip for the radial leakage in the scroll compressor was proposed, and its flow characteristics were
Accepted 15 June 2021
numerically investigated. The impact of micro-grooves geometric parameters, such as groove number,
Available online 20 June 2021
depth, and partitions, on the flow control effect of the radial leakage was discussed, which was obtained
Keywords: by analyzing the evolution of the flow field and its influence on the performance of the scroll compres-
Scroll compressor sor. Results showed that the adoption of micro-grooves in scroll wrap tip yielded a significant limitation
Carbon dioxide on the radial leakage, and geometrical parameters of the micro-grooves directly affected the flow control
Radial leakage performance. Increasing groove numbers and partitions decreased the radial leakage effectively, while the
Micro grooves leakage decreased first and then increased with the increase of the groove depth. The energy dissipation
Flow control
induced by the continuous throttling effect, jet expansion, and vortex in the groove cavity was the main
Numerical analysis
flow control mechanism. The quadruple-grooves with the groove width of 0.5 mm and the groove depth
of 100 μm were adopted in this study eventually. The volumetric and isentropic efficiency of the scroll
compressor raised up 2.1 and 1.0 percentage point compared to the original case, respectively. Through
reasonable working conditions and micro-grooves geometry, the aero-thermodynamic performance of the
oil-free scroll compressor could be improved effectively by the scroll wrap tip with micro-grooves.
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.

Impact des micro-rainures aux extrémités des spirales sur les performances d’un
compresseur à spirales au CO2 transcritique

Mots clés: Compresseur à spirale; Dioxyde de carbone; Fuite radiale; Micro-rainures; Régulation du débit; Analyse numérique

1. Introduction
Heat pump air-conditioning system (HPAC) is regarded as
the state-of-the-art technology for the mobile heating ventilation
and air conditioning (HVAC) system (Farrington and Rugh, 20 0 0;
Kambly and Bradley, 2014), and has been applied by many ma-
jor automobile enterprises, such as NISSAN, BMW, AUDI. How-
ever, the performance of HPAC systems with organic refrigerant de-
clines significantly in the cold climate and shows serious environ-
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: mswei@bit.edu.cn (M. Wei).
mental hazards due to the refrigerant leakage (Pabon et al., 2020;
Zhang et al., 2018). Carbon dioxide is recognized as a promising al-
ternative refrigerant due to no toxicity, no flammability, high volu-
metric capacity, and high heat transfer properties. Since the oper-
ating pressure of the system fed by CO2 is almost 10 times that of
HFCs systems (Wang et al., 2019a, 2019b), the high-pressure brings
more challenges to the controlling gap leakage of the compressor
(Ishii et al., 2002).
Scroll compressors are widely used in micro heat pumps and
refrigeration systems due to the compact structure and high re-
liability. In a typical scroll compressor, radial clearance and axial
clearance cannot be avoided in practical applications due to the
limitation of machining accuracy, stress-induced strain, misalign-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2021.06.021
0140-7007/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al.
Nomenclature
k depth coefficient
p pressure [MPa]
V volume [m3 ]
ρ density [kg•m−3 ]
m˙ mass flow rate [kg•s−1 ]
W work [kJ]
N rotational speed [RPM]
h specific enthalpy [kJ•kg−1 ]
d length [mm]
T time [s]
Greek letter
θ crank angle [degree]
η efficiency
ψ total pressure loss
Subscript
vol volumetric
isen isentropic
in inlet
out outlet
groove groove
axial axial clearance
sim simulation value
ideal theoretical value
ment, and thermal expansion, resulting in the tangential leakage
and radial leakage. Since leakage length of the axial clearance is
much longer than that of the radial clearance, radial leakage flow
has a critical influence on the compressor performance. Due to
the unique operation mechanism of scroll compressors, the inves-
tigation of flow characteristics in scroll compressors through ex-
periments was difficult. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
approach has been considered as an effective method to investi-
gate the unsteady flow characteristics in scroll compressors. How-
ever, the generation of high-quality mesh in multi-scale flow do-
mains and the control of mesh motion has always been the pri-
mary challenges for numerical simulations of scroll machinery
through CFD. The size of the fluid domain in the working cham-
ber is at millimeter-level, but radial and axial clearances are within
the range of 10–30 μm. The size of fluid domains between the
working chamber and clearance has a significant difference, which
brings great difficulty to numerical simulation. Hence, the clear-
ances are commonly enlarged to 10 0–20 0 μm (Zhao et al., 2020)
or neglected (Sun et al., 2017; Rak and Pietrowicz, 2020) to re-
duce the difficulty of numerical simulations in the published lit-
erature. In the work of Zhao et al. (2020), the authors identified
that even though the radial clearance was distinctly larger than
the real value, it was still difficult for the converge of the dynamic
mesh and simulation. To sum up, taking the axial clearance of ac-
tual value into consideration in the simulation of scroll compres-
sors has great significance on the accuracy and reliability of simu-
lation results.
In terms of the impact of the radial leakage on the scroll com-
pressor performance, several works have been conducted in past
years (Cui, 2006; Liu et al., 2014; Sun et al., 2017). The per-
formance of CO2 scroll compressor was initially investigated in
the work of Ishii et al. (2002). The authors compared the effi-
ciency of a compact CO2 scroll compressor and a R410A scroll
compressor with the same cooling capacity through mathemati-
cal approach. Calculated results showed that the volumetric effi-
ciency was the key factor affecting the efficiency of the compact
CO2 scroll compressor. Ishii et al. (2008) further conducted a se-
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International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504
ries of simplified experiments to investigate the surface rough-
ness on leakage flow characteristics in CO2 scroll compressors. Re-
sults showed that the volumetric efficiency of a scroll compres-
sor can be significantly improved by increasing the surface rough-
ness. In Zhang et al. (2018) work, the results showed that the
volumetric efficiency of a scroll hydrogen compressor was down
by 15% with the increase of 20 μm axial clearance. According to
the experimental analysis of Li et al. (2015), temperature and ro-
tational speed were inversely proportional to the axial clearance.
Gao et al. (2015) conducted a simulation of a scroll compressor
with and without tip seal volumes, and the comparison showed
that the average mass flow rate and discharge temperature sep-
arately dropped by 12.1% and 13 K after considering the tip seal
volumes. As presented in Sun’s work (Sun et al., 2019), the effi-
ciency with axial clearance fell by 4.8% and the discharge temper-
ature raised by almost 10 K relative to the efficiency. The large
leakage loss highlights the significance of controlling radial leak-
age flow for the efficient operation of scroll compressors and even
the whole system (Hu et al., 2018, 2020). In the scroll compressor
working with organic refrigerant, tip seal and oil were commonly
employed to prevent the radial leakage through the axial clearance.
However, the sealing effect was still the compromise between the
preload on tip seals against scroll bases and friction loss. The fric-
tion loss increased with the increase of the pressure, while the de-
creased of the pressure leads to the increase of the leakage loss
(Fukuta et al., 2014, 2021; Kitamura et al., 2018).
The aforementioned investigations on the radial leakage in
scroll compressors are limited to the flow characteristics and the
impact on the global performance of the compressors, and pas-
sive flow control approaches for the radial leakage are rarely re-
ported in the literature. Moreover, the radial leakage flow still has
significant influences on the performance of the scroll compressors
with S-CO2 owing to severe thermal deformation and degradation
of the axial or radial flexible sealing mechanism. Therefore, it has
great significance to put forward a non-contact flow control ap-
proach for the radial leakage to enhance the aero-thermodynamic
performance of the scroll compressor. The applications of passive
flow control structure on rotor blade tips of turbomachines, such
as squealer tip and labyrinth groove, are regarded as effective ap-
proaches to reduce tip leakage loss and have been recommended
by many researchers (Krishnababu et al., 2009; Kegalj et al., 2012;
Zhou, 2014). Thus, the similar approach of scroll wrap tips with
micro-grooves may be also employed in the scroll compressor to
reduce the negative impact of the radial leakage on the compres-
sor performance.
In this paper, a three-dimensional unsteady simulation of a
trans-critical CO2 scroll compressor including precise axial clear-
ances was performed. A passive flow control approach of micro-
grooves in the scroll wrap tip was proposed to suppress the radial
leakage. The impact of key geometry parameters, such as groove
numbers, depth, and partitions, on the flow control effect and
global performance of the scroll compressor was also carried out.
It was expected that the results could provide a new perspective
for the aerodynamic control of the tip clearance leakage of scroll
compressors.
2. Numerical procedure
2.1. Geometry model and micro-grooves schemes
The scroll profiles are generated using involute profiles, and the
tip of the scroll profile is modified with two arcs. The main con-
struction parameters of the scroll profile are specified in Table 1.
Moreover, the schematic diagrams of micro-grooves in scroll wrap
tip are shown in Fig. 1. The number of micro-grooves is within 1
to 4, and the groove width is fixed at 0.5 mm in each case.
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al. International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504

Fig. 1. Geometry model and micro-grooves schemes of the scroll wraps.

Fig. 2. The calculation domain and mesh of the scroll compressor.

Table 1 consists of the inlet pipe, outlet pipe, and a part of the outer
Main parameters of the scroll profile.
working chamber, and the flow domain of axial clearances. The
Parameter Symbol Unit Value mesh of the deforming sub-domain was generated by a mesher
base radius Rb mm 2.55 customized specifically for scroll compressors in the CFD solver,
eccentric distance e mm 3.54 and a binary-tree based unstructured meshes were generated for
inside involute angle αi rad 0.873 other domains. The data between each sub-domain was transferred
starting angle of the inside involute i,s rad 5.401 through the interface boundaries. Although the radial clearance
outside involute angle αo rad −0.873
was merely 20 μm, the control of the grid quality and smooth
starting angle of the outside involute o,s rad 2.269
ending angle of the involute e rad 17.279 movement through the scroll revolution were realized by the dy-
radius of inside arc ro mm 7.00 namic mesh algorithm embedded in the CFD solver.
radius of outside arc ri mm 3.45 The mesh generation approach and the control algorithm of the
scroll height H mm 20
moving mesh in the axial clearance were completely different from
scroll thickness t mm 4.45
that of the deforming domain. The original axial clearance was set
as 10 μm. The fluid domain of the axial clearance was modeled as
the size of 1.0 mm first, which was 100 times the actual axial size
2.2. Mesh generation and dynamic mesh control along the axial direction. And then the fluid domain of the axial
clearance with 1.0 mm height was meshed in the software. Lastly,
The computational fluid dynamics software, Simerics MP, was the axial clearance mesh was scaled 0.01 times to restore the orig-
applied to perform three-dimensional unsteady simulations based inal size. The same way was also employed in the mesh generation
on the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach. This CFD of micro-grooves, and the computational domain of the clearances
solver had been proved to be robust and accurate in the numeri- and grooves was connected by the interfaces. Each point on the
cal simulation of scroll compressors (Gao, 2014; Sun et al., 2017, grid of the rotor tip and micro-grooves was moving with the or-
2019). As shown in Fig. 2, the computational domain was divided biting scroll, meanwhile the bottom axial clearance kept stationary
into three sub-domains. The deforming sub-domain changed with with the static scroll. In order to guarantee the eccentric move-
the motion of the orbiting scroll, the non-deforming sub-domain ment of the rotor tip grids, the motion principle of that should be

495
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al.
programmed into the software through the following user-defined
functions:
 The structured grid of the two-teeth labyrinth seal was gener-
xnew = x + (xr − xs ) · cosθ − (yr − ys ) · sin θ − (xr − xs )
(1)
ynew = y + (xr − xs ) · sin θ + (yr − ys ) · cos θ − (yr − ys )
where θ denotes the crank angle, (xs , ys ) and (xr , yr ) are defined as
the coordinate of the center point of the static and orbiting scroll,
respectively. (x, y ) is the initial coordinate of an arbitrary point at
the axial clearance and micro-grooves, and (xnew , ynew ) is the new
coordinate of the point when the axial clearance moves by θ .
2.3. Real gas model and boundary conditions
Since the real gas property of trans-critical CO2 was complex,
solving an accurate Span and Wagner equation of state (Span and
Wagner, 1996) commonly employed a large amount of calculation
cost in numerical simulations. Therefore, the properties including
density, thermal conductivity, viscosity, and enthalpy were consid-
ered as the functions of pressure and temperature, and property
tabulations were implemented to interpolate the thermodynamic
properties of carbon dioxide in the present simulations. The tabu-
lations were pre-calculated based on REFPROP 9.0 which is a fluid
property database developed by National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST, USA), and written into the CFD software for the
calculations. This approach was also adopted in the authors’ previ-
ous work (Zheng et al., 2020).
The pressure and temperature were separately within the range
of 0.1 MPa to 14.0 MPa and 230.0 K to 530.0 K, and the tabula-
tion resolution was 80 0×80 0. The property range was beyond the
range of the operation condition to ensure that the property tab-
ulation could cover the non-physical property variation in the ini-
tial simulation period of the computational iterations. Besides, the
property points were equally arranged in the tabulations since the
violent property variation near the critical point did not happen
in the trans-critical scroll compressor, which was revealed in Ref
(Zheng et al., 2020).
The static pressure and temperature of the inlet were sepa-
rately specified as 3.39 MPa and 283 K. The simulation was carried
out under the low-pressure condition and high-pressure condition,
respectively. The static outlet pressure was applied as the outlet
pressure boundary, and the pressure ratio was separately set as
1.64 and 2.82. All the sidewalls were adiabatic with no slip. The
rotational speed was fixed as 1500 RPM. The SIMPLEC-algorithm
was employed to solve the Navier-Stokes equations. The first-order
upwind schemes were enabled for the turbulence equations, and
the second-order upwind schemes were applied for the spatial dis-
cretization of density, momentum, and energy equations respec-
tively. Moreover, the combination of dynamic grid and tiny clear-
ance brought a great challenge to the CFD simulation of the scroll
compressor with CO2 , especially in the aspect of turbulence model.
Thus, the turbulence model should be verified separately.
3. Numerical method verification
3.1. Supercritical CO2 in a two-teeth labyrinth seal
In order to investigate the flow characteristics of supercritical
CO2 in labyrinth seals of turbomachinery in high efficiency power
cycles, Yuan and Anderson (2016) conducted a simplified experi-
ment with a two-teeth labyrinth seal. Since the geometry structure
of the labyrinth seal in the literature was much coincident with the
micro-grooves adopted in the present paper, and the working fluid
was also CO2 , the experimental data in the literature was adopted
to verify the numerical approach in the present study. Fig. 3 illus-
trates the schematic diagram of the two-teeth labyrinth seal, and
the detailed geometric parameters are represented in Table 2. The
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International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504
labyrinth seal was arranged on the outside wall of a cylinder, and
S-CO2 entered the seal from the left and leaked out to the right.
ated for the computational domain, and grids were denser near the
walls to ensure the value of y+ met the requirements of turbulence
models. The real gas properties tabulations of CO2 were incorpo-
rated in the CFD solver as lookup tables for the calculations. The
inlet static pressure and temperature were 10.0 MPa and 319 K,
respectively, while the static pressure was defined as the outlet
boundary condition. The pressure ratio was assigned in the range
of 0.3 to 0.9. All the sidewall condition was assumed as adiabatic
with no-slip.
The grid independence is verified first, and the result is rep-
resented in Fig. 4(a). The distribution of the static pressure along
the streamwise varies with different grid numbers, and the trend
of curves are coincident when the grid number is more than about
456,0 0 0. The maximum relative error between the experimental
results and simulation values is within 1.5%. Thus, the case with
456,0 0 0 grids is selected to verify turbulence models. As shown in
Fig. 4(b), the results of four turbulence models agree with the ex-
perimental data well while the pressure ratio is below 0.6. After
that, the result calculated by the S-A turbulence model is gradu-
ally lower than that of the other turbulence models. The results
of the SST k-ω, k-ε , and RNG k-ε turbulence models are almost
coincident with the values in the literature, and the result of the
RNG k-ε model has a better consistency. Therefore, the numeri-
cal method is verified via the good consistency between simula-
tion values and experimental results, and the RNG k-ε turbulence
model is employed in the subsequent calculation and analysis.
3.2. Grid independence analysis of the scroll compressor
Five cases with 660,0 0 0 to 970,0 0 0 grids for the whole fluid do-
main of the scroll compressor were employed in the grid indepen-
dence analysis. The volumetric efficiency and isentropic efficiency
were regarded as the evaluation criteria. Besides, only flow losses
were considered in the isentropic efficiency, and mechanical losses
and heat transfer irreversibility were neglected. The equations of
the volumetric and isentropic efficiency are defined as follows:
m˙ sim m˙ sim
ηvol = = (2)
m˙ ideal N · Vsuc · ρin
Wisen m˙ (hout,isen − hin )
ηisen = = ideal (3)
Wsim Wsim
where ηvol and ηisen denote separately the volumetric efficiency
and isentropic efficiency, m˙ sim and m˙ ideal stands for the simulation
and theoretical value of the inlet mass flow rate, respectively. N is
the rotational speed. Vsuc and ρin are the theoretical suction vol-
ume and the fluid density at the inlet, respectively. Wisen and Wsim
represent separately the power consumed in the isentropic process
and the average shaft power per revolution in the simulation. hin
is the specific enthalpy of the inlet fluid, and hout,isen represents
the specific enthalpy of the outlet and is obtained based on the
isentropic compression process.
The result of grids independence verification is shown in Fig. 5,
the relative errors of the volumetric efficiency and isentropic effi-
ciency were within 0.1% when the grids number was larger than
923,0 0 0. Considering the computational time and accuracy, the
flow domain with 923,0 0 0 grids was employed in the subsequent
simulations.
4. Results and analysis
Following steps are applied in seeking for the optimal geometry
of the micro-grooves to obtain better non-contact sealing perfor-
mance: The groove depth was first assumed as a constant. Then,
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al.
Fig. 3. Flow domain and grid of the two-teeth labyrinth seal (Yuan and Anderson, 2016).
Table 2
Dimension of two-teeth labyrinth seal (Yuan and Anderson, 2016).
Shaft diameter Shaft clearance
Notation D c
Value 3 mm 0.105 mm
Fig. 4. Verification results of grids independence and turbulence models.
various groove depths were taken into consideration. Finally, the
partition schemes of the micro-grooves were investigated. More-
over, the influence of key geometry parameters of the micro-
grooves on the global performance of the scroll compressor was
also carried out in each section.
4.1. Effect of groove number
The groove depth was specified as 40 μm first. The mod-
els with single-groove (Case-1g), double-groove (Case-2g), triple-
groove (Case-3g), and quadruple-groove (Case-4g) were adopted
in the calculations. The results were compared with the original
case (Case-no groove) to evaluate the flow control effect. The radial
leakage with high pressure and temperature leaks from the inner
chamber to the outer chamber through the axial clearance, lead-
ing to the increase of the discharge temperature and decrease of
International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504
Cavity depth Cavity width Tooth width Total length Number of teeth
H Lcavity Lseal Ltotal N
0.88 mm 1.27 mm 1.27 mm 3.81 mm 2
the discharge mass flow rate. Thus, the variation of the discharge
temperature and total discharge mass flow rate per revolution are
adopted as the indirect criterion for the flow control effect of the
radial leakage.
The crank angle is defined as 0° at the end of the suction pro-
cess, and the variation of the discharge temperature with the crank
angles is illustrated in Fig. 6. The discharge temperature of each
case is very close to the original case under the low-pressure oper-
ation condition. As for the Case-1g and Case-2g, the discharge tem-
perature is slightly higher than the original case since the grooves
may be insufficient to reduce the radial leakage flow. However, the
discharge temperature of the Case-3g and Case-4g are lower than
that of the case with no-groove in a certain crank angle. Although
the micro-grooves with the depth of 40 μm is unable to restrain
the radial leakage well, the variation of the average discharge mass
flow rate per revolution increases from −0.0 0 043 to −0.0 0 017 kg/s
497
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al.
Fig. 5. Verification results of the grid independence.
with the increase of the groove number. When the scroll compres-
sor operates under high pressure, the discharge temperature of the
cases with multi-grooves is lower than that of the original case.
The discharge temperature drops significantly with the growth of
the groove number, and the average discharge mass flow rate per
revolution of the Case-4g increases by 0.00114 kg/s at most. Due
to the symmetrical arrangement of the axial clearances, only one-
sided field quantities distribution of the orbiting scroll on the z-
axial section are shown. The temperature distribution in the axial
clearances of the orbiting scroll is displayed in Fig. 7, the distinct
temperature gradient is observed in the quadruple-grooves, and
the high-temperature region gradually shrinks with the increase of
the micro-grooves.
Since the radial leakage mainly flows along the normal direc-
tion of the scroll profile, the radial flow can be simplified to two-
dimensional flow in the z-axial section of the axial clearance. In
terms of the unique mechanism of the scroll compressor, the pres-
sure in each working chamber varies periodically with the orbiting
scroll rotation. Therefore, a z-axial section A-A’ of the static scroll
tip was employed to reveal the impact of diverse groove parame-
ters on the radial leakage flow, as shown in Fig. 8. Time-averaged
total pressure loss coefficient ψ is adopted as a quantitative crite-
rion of the energy dissipation extent of the radial leakage flow in
Fig. 6. Discharge temperature with diverse groove numbers.
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International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504
the grooves:
 T
1
p= pdt (4)
T 0
ptotal,in − ptotal,out
ψ= (5)
ptotal,in − pstatic,in
where T in the denominator of Eq. (4) represents the period of
the orbiting scroll, and p represents the instantaneous pressure at
a certain position of section A-A’. ptotal,in and ptotal,out denote the
time-averaged total pressure at the inlet and outlet of section A-A’
along the red line marked in the figure, respectively. pstatic,in repre-
sents the time-averaged static pressure at the inlet of section A-A’.
The variation of the time-averaged total pressure loss coeffi-
cient and variation rate with the grooves are shown in Fig. 8. Both
the total pressure loss coefficient and the variation ratio gradually
rise with the increase of the micro-grooves. The more total pres-
sure loss indicates the more energy loss of the radial leakage in
the grooves, resulting in the descent of the leakage impact on the
downstream fluid. The variation ratio of the Case-1g varies from
5% to 10% under the different operating pressure, while it is en-
hanced by up to 34% in the Case-4g. The increasing groove number
is equivalent to prolonging the process of energy dissipation, which
inevitably leads to the decrease of the negative effect of the ra-
dial leakage and the sealing performance improvement (Qin et al.,
2020). However, the improvement is not linearly correlated with
the groove numbers, the slope of the variation ratio decelerates
when the groove number is above 3. It means that increasing the
number of grooves has little effect on the performance improve-
ment. Therefore, the model with four micro-grooves (Case-4g) is
eventually selected as the object of the simulations, and the im-
pact of the groove depth and groove partitions on the flow control
effect is carried out in the subsequent calculation and analysis.
4.2. Effect of groove depth
Case-4g is selected as the investigation object, and the values
of the groove depth are separately specified as 40, 10 0, 20 0, and
300 μm. Besides, the grooves are divided into 24 segments cir-
cumferentially. A depth coefficient k, which represents the ratio of
the groove depth to the axial clearance, is adopted to characterize
the pulsation in the transient discharge temperature for different
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al. International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504

Fig. 7. Temperature distribution on the rotor axial clearance in the Case-no groove and Case-4 g.

Fig. 8. Schematic diagram of the 2D z-axial clearance section and the total pressure loss coefficient and variation ratio with diverse groove numbers.

groove depth as defined by Eq. (6): The impact of depth coefficients on the volumetric efficiency
and isentropic efficiency of the scroll compressor is shown in
dgroove Fig. 10. The volumetric efficiency of the original case under low
k= (6)
daxial and high pressure is 67.68% and 52.48% separately, while the isen-
tropic efficiency under two operation conditions is 50.36% and
where daxial and dgroove denote the axial clearance and groove
40.56%, respectively. The increase of the operating pressure in-
depth, respectively. According to Eq. (6), the depth coefficients k
evitably leads to the increase of the radial leakage, thereby reduc-
in the Case-4g are 4, 10, 20 and 30, respectively.
ing the volumetric efficiency and isentropic efficiency. As shown in
The variation of the discharge temperature with diverse depth
Fig. 10, both the volumetric and isentropic efficiency rise first and
coefficients are illustrated in Fig. 9. Under the low-pressure condi-
then drop with the increase of the depth coefficients. At k = 10,
tion, the discharge temperature rises first and then declines with
the volumetric efficiencies reach the peak value of 69.40% and
the increase of depth coefficients. The peak value of the discharge
54.60% under low and high pressure, respectively. Although the
temperature occurs in the case of k = 4, while the case of k = 10
volumetric efficiency rises up 2 percentage point with the coef-
exhibits the best performance of the leakage flow control in terms
ficient varying from 20 to 30, the positive effect of the micro-
of the lowest discharge temperature. The discharge temperature in
grooves gradually drops with the coefficient increment. Due to the
the case with k = 20 is similar to that of k = 30. The flow con-
significant pressure difference between the working chambers un-
trol effect of the micro-grooves increases clearly under high op-
der high pressure, a large amount of the radial leakage flows di-
erating pressure. The change trend of the discharge temperature
rectly into the downstream chamber, and the straightforward leak-
under high pressure is similar with that of low operating pres-
age effect is strengthened with the increase of the pressure differ-
sure. The micro-grooves with k = 10 still show the best control
ence. Hence, the micro-grooves with a larger depth coefficient do
performance of the radial leakage flow under the high pressure.
not achieve a better sealing performance under high pressure.
The average discharge mass flow rate per revolution of the micro-
As for the isentropic efficiency, its variation trend agrees well
grooves with k = 10 is separately improved by 0.00102 kg/s and
with that of the volumetric efficiency. Since the increase of the
0.00123 kg/s under low and high-pressure condition. Meanwhile,
radial leakage leads to the discharge temperature increment, the
the improvement of the discharge mass flow rate in the cases with
outlet specific enthalpy decreases, which leads to the less obvious
k = 20 are less than 0.0 0 088 kg/s and 0.0 0 062 kg/s under two
increase of isentropic efficiency than the volumetric efficiency. To
conditions, respectively.

499
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al.
Fig. 9. Discharge temperature with diverse depth coefficients.
Fig. 10. Impact of the depth coefficients on the volumetric efficiency and isentropic
efficiency of the Case-4 g.
sum up, the flow control effect of the micro-grooves is not linearly
related to the groove depth. When the depth coefficient k reaches
an appropriate value, the control performance is worsened with
the growth of the depth coefficients.
The velocity contours and local streamlines of the micro-
grooves with diverse depth coefficients on A-A’ section are pre-
sented in Fig. 11. In the micro-grooves of k = 4, the radial leakage
mainly flows into the groove cavity without flow direction change,
which fails to develop into a vortex. As the depth coefficient k is
equal to 10, the fluid jets in the micro-grooves cavity and separates
from the tip wall, resulting in a quasi-backstep flow. A small vortex
occurs in the corner of the groove cavity. With the increase of the
groove depth, the vortex gradually develops in the groove cavity. A
fully developed vortex can be observed while the depth coefficient
k accesses 20. The vortex appears in the center of the groove cavity
and occupies the whole cavity. Nevertheless, although more flow
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International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504
space is provided for the vortex with the increase of the groove
depth, the position of the vortex core in the case of k = 30 is still
similar to that in the case of k = 20.
The working fluid flows from the working chamber into the ax-
ial clearance, the flow area contracts rapidly, inducing the throt-
tling effect. At the top clearance of the micro-grooves, a portion
of the pressure head is converted into kinetic energy, and the
flow velocity increases sharply owing to the throttling effect. After-
ward, the working fluid enters the rectangular cavity of the micro-
grooves, and the flow velocity decreases correspondingly due to
the rapid expansion of the flow space. With the increase of the
depth coefficient, the groove cavity provides more sufficient space
for the development and rotation of the vortex. The flow veloc-
ity of the vortex in the groove cavity decreases successively from
outside to inside, a distinct high-velocity gradient appears, result-
ing in the increase of the turbulence kinetic energy. Finally, the ki-
netic energy is dissipated and converted into thermal energy by
the vortex (Trutnovsky et al., 1986). As the working fluid flows
through the micro-grooves in turn, the energy dissipation is en-
hanced by the multiple conversions among pressure energy, kinetic
energy, and thermal energy. After multiple energy dissipation, the
impact of the radial leakage flow on the downstream decreases
correspondingly. However, the deeper micro-grooves do not bring
better flow control effects. It appears that the deeper cavity pro-
vides the extra space to accumulate the radial leakage, leading to
the increase in the total amount of the radial leakage eventually.
As a result, the flow control effect declines by the grooves with
large-depth instead.
The total pressure loss coefficient and coefficient growth rate
with the depth coefficients are shown in Fig. 12. The impact of
the groove depth on the total pressure loss increases first and de-
clines with the growth of the depth coefficients. The micro-grooves
with k = 10 led to the maximum total pressure loss, which repre-
sents the best flow control effect on the radial leakage flow. More-
over, since the variation ratio under high-pressure is approximately
10% higher than that under low-pressure, the adoption of micro-
grooves in scroll wrap tips is proved to be essential, especially un-
der high pressure.
4.3. Effect of groove partitions
Another important factor that may affect the sealing effect of
the micro-grooves is the circumferential flow of the radial leak-
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al.
Fig. 11. Flow velocity contours and local streamlines of the micro-grooves with diverse depth coefficients on A-A’ section.
Fig. 12. Total pressure loss coefficient and variation ratio with the depth coeffi-
cients.
age. In order to reveal the underlying influence mechanism of the
groove partitions on the flow control performance, the quadruple-
Fig. 13. Scroll wraps circumferentially partitioned into diverse segments.
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International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504
grooves with the groove depth of 100 μm are divided into 4, 24
and 48 segments circumferentially as shown in Fig. 13. Addition-
ally, the quadruple-grooves with no partition (Case-0s) are also
taken into consideration.
The impact of the groove partitions on the discharge temper-
ature is illustrated in Fig. 14. The discharge temperature declines
significantly due to the increase of the partitions, especially un-
der the high-pressure condition. Compared with the original case,
the grooves with no partitions distinctly enlarge the radial leak-
age, resulting in the distinct temperature rise. The average dis-
charge mass flow rate per revolution in the Case-0s decreases by
0.00151 kg/s and 0.00043 kg/s under both operation conditions, re-
spectively. The grooves which are divided into 4 segments have lit-
tle effect on controlling the radial leakage flow, while the average
discharge temperature falls by 1.5 K in the case with 24 or 48 seg-
ments. Under the high-pressure condition, the total discharge mass
flow rate per revolution in the Case-24s and Case-48s increases by
0.00123 kg/s and 0.00128 kg/s, respectively.
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al.
Fig. 14. Variation of the discharge temperature with diverse groove partitions.
Fig. 15. Impact of the groove partitions on the volumetric and isentropic efficiency.
Fig. 15 illustrates the impact of diverse groove partitions on the
volumetric efficiency and isentropic efficiency. No groove partition
has significantly negative effects on the performance, and the vol-
umetric efficiency and isentropic efficiency of the Case-0s are sig-
nificantly lower than those of the original case. As for the Case-4s,
the performance is almost identical with that of the original case
although the grooves are divided into 4 segments. Compared with
the original case, the volumetric and isentropic efficiency of the
case with the grooves divided into 24 segments rise up a percent-
age of 2.1 and 1.0 under high pressure, respectively. Moreover, the
improvement of the global performance of the Case-48s is not ob-
vious compared with that of the Case-24s, which represents that
the grooves with 24 segments are sufficient to restrict the radial
leakage.
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International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504
The velocity vector and Mach number distribution of the or-
biting scroll tip at the crank angle of 180° is shown in Fig. 16.
The radial leakage generally flows along the normal direction of
the scroll wraps. However, a distinct low-pressure region at the
meshing point is induced by the tangential leakage flow with high-
velocity. Due to the obvious pressure difference between the radial
leakage and meshing region, the radial leakage with normal flow
direction is distorted towards the downstream, leading to the cir-
cumferential development of the leakage in the axial clearance.
With the increase of the partition numbers, the length of the
circumferential leakage line and the region of high Mach num-
ber shrink distinctly, as shown in Fig. 16. In the Case-0s, a large
amount of the radial leakage is diverted to the downstream cham-
ber along the grooves, resulting in the deterioration of the com-
pressor performance. It can be considered that the grooves with no
partition act as the diversion grooves rather than the pneumatic-
sealed grooves and exhibit a negative impact on the flow control
of the radial leakage significantly. As for the Case-4s, the circumfer-
ential development of the radial leakage flow is restricted to some
extent by the fewer partitions, but the leakage along the grooves
still exists. Similarly, the diversion effect of the grooves with 4 par-
titions neutralizes its flow control effect on the radial leakage, and
thus the performance including the discharge temperature, volu-
metric efficiency, and isentropic efficiency of the Case-4s is similar
to those of the original case. On the other hand, the circumfer-
ential development of the leakage flow is effectively restricted by
blocking effect of the continuous partitions in the Case-24s, and
the leakage flow towards the downstream is barely observed near
the mesh points. Thus, the grooves divided into 24 partitions are
sufficient in the leakage flow control for industrial applications. It
is also explained that the performance of the Case-48s is similar
with that of the Case-24s.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, a non-contact flow control approach of micro-
grooves in scroll wrap tips was proposed on purpose to decrease
the negative impact of the radial leakage flow on the performance
of the scroll compressor. The impact of the key geometric parame-
ters of the micro grooves, such as groove number, groove depth,
and circumferential partitions, on the flow control effect of the
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al.
Fig. 16. Velocity vector and Mach number distribution with diverse groove partitions.
radial leakage and the transient performance of the scroll com-
pressor, were numerically investigated. The main conclusions are
drawn below.
(1) Grooving on the tip of the scroll wraps is proved to reduce
the discharge temperature and enhance the volumetric and
isentropic efficiency of the scroll compressor effectively. The
flow control effect of the multi-grooves is much better than
that of the fewer grooves. The increasing groove number is
equivalent to prolonging the process of energy dissipation,
which leads to the decrease of the negative effect of the ra-
dial leakage and the sealing performance improvement. In
this study, four micro-grooves are sufficient to control the
radial leakage.
(2) The groove depth affects the development of the vortex in
the groove cavity. The energy dissipation induced by the
continuous throttling effect, jet expansion, and vortex is the
main flow control mechanism of the micro-grooves. Both
the volumetric efficiency and isentropic efficiency rise first
and then drop with the increase of the groove depth. The
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International Journal of Refrigeration 131 (2021) 493–504
groove depth of 100 μm is regarded as the optimal value in
this study. The volumetric efficiency and isentropic efficiency
of the case including quadruple-grooves with the depth of
100 μm are 2.1 and 1.0 percentage points higher than those
of the original case, respectively.
(3) The number of groove partitions has a decisive influence
on the sealing performance of the micro-grooves. When
the grooves have a small number of partitions, the micro-
grooves act as deflector grooves, accelerating the radial leak-
age flow and deteriorating the compressor performance. On
the contrary, the radial leakage flow is distinctly restricted
by the blocking effect of the continuous partitions in the cir-
cumferential direction in the case with a large number of
the groove partitions.
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.
S. Zheng, M. Wei, C. Hu et al.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (Grant No. 52006010 and Grant No. 520 060 09),
and Beijing Institute of Technology Research Fund Program for
Young Scholars (2–2050205–2020CX04054).
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