• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.11-17
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• 2016

In this paper, a numerical analysis was performed to investigate the effect of the pitch angle of a helical nozzle on the performance characteristics of a vortex tube. Three-dimensional numerical simulation has been performed with standard $k-{\varepsilon}$ turbulence model by using FLUENT 13.0. The effect of the pitch angle of helical nozzle was described in term of ${\beta}$. A CFD analysis was performed on ${\beta}=0^{\circ}$, $5^{\circ}$, $10^{\circ}$, $15^{\circ}$. In order to realize the influence of ${\beta}$ on performances of the vortex tube. Computation results were expressed by the ${\beta}-{\Delta}T_{h,c}$ graph and radial profiles of axial velocity and swirl velocity. The results showed that ${\beta}$ which improves energy separation capacity of vortex tube was $5^{\circ}$ at ${\alpha}=0.33$, 0.5 and $10^{\circ}$ at ${\alpha}=0.33$. Besides, It was confirmed that the results were closely related to axial velocity and swirl velocity.