Measurement of the permeability of suction filter in reciprocating compressor.

The paper deals with permeability measurement of suction filter sample used in semi-hermetic reciprocating compressor. The main goal of the work was to verify the assumption that the suction filter made from thin stainless-steel grid can be considered as a porous medium and if it is possible to apply 1-D porous media model based on Darcy’s law and Forchheimer equation in CFD simulation for this application. For this purpose there were carried out experimental measurements of permeability of suction filter material with water. Since the materials was in the form of sheets, two measuring cells were used, one for the principal in-plane permeabilities and the other for the out-of-plane permeability. The method of permeability measurement was based on saturated parallel flow. As a result of measurements there are shown graphs with dependancies of permeability with various Reynolds number.