Tangential leakage loss is the primary factor that significantly affects the output performance of oil-free scroll expanders. A scroll expander can function under different operating conditions, and the flow of tangential leakage and generation mechanism is different. This study employed computational fluid dynamics to investigate the unsteady flow characteristics of the tangential leakage flow of a scroll expander with air as the working fluid. Consequently, the effects of different radial gap sizes, rotational speeds, inlet pressures, and temperatures on the tangential leakage were discussed. The tangential leakage decreased with increases in the scroll expander rotational speed, inlet pressure, and temperature, and decreased with decrease in radial clearance. With an equal-proportional increase in radial clearance, the flow form of the gas in the first expansion and back-pressure chambers became more complicated; when the radial clearance increased from 0.2 to 0.5 mm, the volumetric efficiency of the scroll expander decreased by approximately 5.0521%. Moreover, because of the large radial clearance, the tangential leakage flow maintained a subsonic flow. Further, the tangential leakage decreased with increase in rotational speed, and when the rotational speed increased from 2000 to 5000 r/min, the volumetric efficiency increased by approximately 8.7565%.
Keywords: computational fluid dynamics; micro-scale compressed air energy storage system; numerical simulation; scroll expander; tangential leakage.