Design, modeling and characteristics research of a novel self-air-cooling reciprocating compressor

Abstract High pressure miniature air compressor plays an irreplaceable role in some areas such as refrigeration and pneumatic ejection in the fighter. But, as a lot of heat is produced during compression, the cooling system consumes relatively more energy and its volume and weight even exceeds the compressor itself. So, how to design cooling system becomes the key factor. A novel self-air-cooling reciprocating compressor (SACRC) is first proposed in this paper, which can continuously cool the compressor through ingenious structural design without any auxiliary equipment. The SACRC's model is established considering of thermal dynamics and heat exchange characteristics of all the units, which regards the spiral groove in the cooling system as a chamber with compressibility and heat exchange. The characteristics of SACRC are studied by comparative simulation and experiment validation with traditional reciprocating compressor (TRC). The research results showed that the volumetric efficiency and temperature characteristics of SACRC are both improved significantly especially at high output pressure and long working time, which is pioneering significance to further improve the miniaturization of high pressure compressor.