Numerical Analysis of Fluid Flow and Filtering Efficiency in Centrifugal Oil Filter

Abstract ： In centrifugal oil filters particles are forced to move toward the filter casing wall by centrifugal force in the rotating oil flow and the particles are trapped and removed on the filter paper installed at the wall. In the prese nt study, flow field of oil and particle motion in a centrifugal oil filter has been numeri cally calculated in order to estimate the filtering efficiency for various operating conditions. Fluent code was used for the numerical calculations. Uncoupling the oil flow and the particle motion and the use of particle tracking trajectory enabled the estimation of f iltering efficiency for various particle sizes, particle density and the filter rotatio nal speed. Higher filtering efficiency was observed for heavier and larger particles as wel l as higher filter rotational speed. For the typical case of the particle density of 6000 kg/m 3 and the particle size of 10 μm at 3500 RPM, the calculated filtering efficiency per passage was 0.31. Key words ：Oil filter(오일필터), Centrifugal filter(원심필터), Filtering efficiency(필터링효율), CFD(전산 유체역학)