A STUDY OF PLANAR ORBITING MECHANISM AND ITS APPLICATIONS TO SCROLL FLUID MACHINERY

The law of gearing plays a very important role in the mechanism and ma chine design. On the contrary to a gear which usually rotates about it s own axis without translational motion, the planar orbiting mechanism moving around a circular orbit without self-rotation is also an impor tant mechanism. It has the ability of changing its enclosed fluid volu me and therefore can be applied to fluid machines such as pumps, compr essors and engines. In this paper, some elementary theorems related to the design of planar orbiting mechanisms are proposed and proved. App lications based on these theorems are discussed. Two examples in the d esign of scroll fluid machines are particularly illustrated; one of wh ich focuses on the geometric scroll shape design and the other points out a way to construct the so-called perfectly meshing scroll profiles . (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.