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Fault Detection and Diagnostics for Rooftop Air Conditioners

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93<br />

application falls into the “very well” range, because if the upstream has no subcooling<br />

∆ T ll<br />

would be used to do FDD <strong>for</strong> a liquid-line restriction.<br />

A1.1.2 Capillary-Tube Models<br />

Since capillary tubes are used very widely in household refrigerators <strong>and</strong> room air<br />

conditioners, exhaustive research has been conducted <strong>for</strong> capillary tubes. Similar to a<br />

short-tube, the flow through a capillary tube is choked. Since capillary tubes are seldom<br />

used in small commercial air-conditioners <strong>and</strong> many good correlations can be found in<br />

the literature, models <strong>for</strong> them are not repeated here.<br />

A1.2 Adjustable Throat-Area Expansion Valve Models<br />

The drawback associated with fixed-area devices is their limited ability to<br />

efficiently regulate refrigerant flow in response to changes in system operating conditions,<br />

since they are sized based on one set of conditions. Adjustable throat-area expansion<br />

valves provide a better solution to regulating refrigerant flow into a direct expansion type<br />

evaporator using certain feedback control strategy. The thermostatic expansion valve<br />

(TXV) <strong>and</strong> the electric expansion valve (EXV) fall into the adjustable throat-area<br />

expansion valve. The TXV uses a single variable proportional feedback control scheme<br />

to maintain a nearly constant superheat at the evaporator outlet. The fundamental<br />

principle of a EXV is the same as a TXV except that it is designed with sophisticated<br />

system control strategies including PID <strong>and</strong> multivariable control.<br />

Although TXVs <strong>and</strong> EXVs are used widely, modeling literature <strong>for</strong> them is very<br />

limited. When building a simulation model <strong>for</strong> a system, some researchers ignored them<br />

<strong>and</strong> assumed constant superheat. Some researchers (Harms, 2002) correlated TXV<br />

per<strong>for</strong>mance using experimental data. Among the limited literature, none discusses<br />

fundamentally whether the flow is choked or not. In the limited literature, the following<br />

<strong>for</strong>mat <strong>for</strong> a TXV model has been adopted,<br />

93

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