TY - THES

T1 - Assessment of an Innovative Compressor Design

AU - Niederseer, Christoph

N1 - embargoed until null

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - Viktor Schauberger became over the course of his life a remarkable natural scientist, inventor and philosopher. He established the theory that if water flows in an inwardly spiralling copper pipe, great losses due to resistance and friction occurs. Prof. Pöpel experimentally confirmed this hypothesis in the year 1952. This result from the experiment was the motivation for the master thesis. Based on them and Schauberger's theories a feasibility study was made. It was investigated if these theories can be applied in the automotive industry for forced induction and further research in this direction is meaningful. By using computational fluid dynamics the assertion from Schauberger could not be confirmed in the course of this work. According to the expectations the simulation’s results show a linear relationship between flow rate and flow losses in pipes. The pipes with the smallest wall surfaces and thus with the lower friction areas are having the highest flow rate. The results from 1952 can only be explained by a faulty experimental set up and a very unscientific evaluation of the measurements. The idea of Mr. Franz Mayr, employee of the company Magna Steyr, was to construct an absolutely new kind of compressor with spiral channels. For the investigation a turbocharger was used as a reference, where the pressure ratio increases with increasing revolutions per minute and air flow. The concept with spiral channels shows the opposite behaviour and is able to defeat the turbocharger at low rotation speeds. According to the results a second reference turbocharger with higher flow rates at lower rotational speeds was used for further comparison. The analysis of the behaviour of the new concept at lower rotation speeds lead to the same result. Again at lower rotation speeds the spiral compressor defeats the reference until a certain number of revolutions. The results of the simulations have shown that the first considerations towards to turbochargers were proved to be false. The spiral concept should be investigated in the area of superchargers, compressors with low speed of rotation. Further fluid flow simulation research is necessary and should be improved and verified experimentally.

AB - Viktor Schauberger became over the course of his life a remarkable natural scientist, inventor and philosopher. He established the theory that if water flows in an inwardly spiralling copper pipe, great losses due to resistance and friction occurs. Prof. Pöpel experimentally confirmed this hypothesis in the year 1952. This result from the experiment was the motivation for the master thesis. Based on them and Schauberger's theories a feasibility study was made. It was investigated if these theories can be applied in the automotive industry for forced induction and further research in this direction is meaningful. By using computational fluid dynamics the assertion from Schauberger could not be confirmed in the course of this work. According to the expectations the simulation’s results show a linear relationship between flow rate and flow losses in pipes. The pipes with the smallest wall surfaces and thus with the lower friction areas are having the highest flow rate. The results from 1952 can only be explained by a faulty experimental set up and a very unscientific evaluation of the measurements. The idea of Mr. Franz Mayr, employee of the company Magna Steyr, was to construct an absolutely new kind of compressor with spiral channels. For the investigation a turbocharger was used as a reference, where the pressure ratio increases with increasing revolutions per minute and air flow. The concept with spiral channels shows the opposite behaviour and is able to defeat the turbocharger at low rotation speeds. According to the results a second reference turbocharger with higher flow rates at lower rotational speeds was used for further comparison. The analysis of the behaviour of the new concept at lower rotation speeds lead to the same result. Again at lower rotation speeds the spiral compressor defeats the reference until a certain number of revolutions. The results of the simulations have shown that the first considerations towards to turbochargers were proved to be false. The spiral concept should be investigated in the area of superchargers, compressors with low speed of rotation. Further fluid flow simulation research is necessary and should be improved and verified experimentally.

KW - Viktor Schauberger

KW - Motoraufladung

KW - CFD

KW - Kompressor

KW - Verdichter

KW - Spirale

KW - Strömungssimulation

KW - Viktor Schauberger

KW - forced induction

KW - CFD

KW - computational fluid dynamics

KW - spiral

KW - compressor

M3 - Master's Thesis

ER -