A Numerical Study on Pressure Drop and Flow Characteristics in Pleated Filters

절곡필터에서의 압력강하 및 유동특성에 관한 수치적 연구

Pressure drop and flow characteristics through a filter medium have been investigated numerically. A basic model similar to the filter employed in a hard disk drive was established so that the inflow velocity was 0.1 m/s and the box size was $40mm{\times}50mm{\times}30mm$. The filter medium specifications were 0.38mm of thickness, $1{\mu}m$ of fiber diameter, 0.05 of packing density. And the filter medium was pleated by 10 within the filter box. Twenty-one sets of calculation were performed with different inlet velocities, pleated numbers, and packing densities from the basic model. As the result, it was found that the velocity after filter medium had maximum value at the rear of the upstream pleated line, but had minimum value at the rear of the downstream pleated line. This made the velocity distribution have sinusoidal form immediately after the filter medium. As the inlet velocity increased, the pressure drop increased linearly. But as the packing density increased the pressure drop increased quadratically.