Fluid-structure interaction of a reed type valve

This paper presents a complete numerical procedure to study the fluid-structure interaction problem of incompressible flow through reed valves, typically employed in hermetic reciprocating compressors. A partitioned semi-implicit coupling scheme is implemented, which only strongly couples the added-mass-effect (pressure term) of the fluid to the structure hence, assuring numerical stability and avoiding excessive computational cost. The fluid is solved by a three-dimensional CFD solver using large eddy simulation closures to model the turbulent flow, while the reed valve is described with the classical plate theory and the normal mode summation method. To showcase the potentiality of the proposed methodology, a sensitivity analysis regarding valve thickness is carried out for a given velocity in the feeding channel. Considerable differences, mainly in valve lift and pressure drop, are appreciated between the considered configurations.