A robust modelling approach for simulating refrigerant flow through capillary tubes.

A novel computational model for simulating refrigerant flow through capillary tubes is proposed and validated using a dataset composed of 1005 experimental data points, including adiabatic and non-adiabatic flows of refrigerants HFC-134a and HC-600a. The modeling approach is based on the mass, energy and momentum conservation principles written according to their one-dimensional differential formulation. Some simplifications were added to the model in order to improve its numerical stability. It was found that the model predicts 87% of the measured refrigerant mass flow rate for adiabatic and 76% for non-adiabatic flow within an error band of plus or minus 10%.