Experimental study of internal acoustic field generated by oil separator component of refrigeration cycle

Compressed air experiments are conducted to investigate the internal acoustic field generated by the simple top insert edge and the oil separator model of refrigeration cycle system. The acoustic characteristic of flow through the insert edge was found to be broadband with no discrete tones. Furthermore, some tones were captured in the internal oil separator model but the insert edge had no impact on these whistle peaks. Different whistle tone modes are captured with the varying volume ratios (VRs) of oil separator model. These whistle peaks are not related to the resonance of oil separator model but agreed well with the modes calculated by the Rossiter’s modified formula. The whistle noise generation mechanism is regarded to be a feedback loop of flow-acoustic interaction in the fluctuated shear layer.