Instability of automotive air conditioning system with a variable displacement compressor. Part 1. Experimental investigation

A test system is built first in order to investigate the instability of the automotive air conditioning (AAC) system with a variable displacement compressor (VDC), and hunting phenomena caused by the large external disturbance in the AAC system with a VDC and a thermal expansion valve, and in the AAC system with a VDC and a fixed-area throttling device are investigated experimentally in part 1 of this paper. The experimental results indicate that there also exist the hunting phenomena in the AAC system with a fixed-area throttling device. The system stability is found to be dependent on the direction of the external disturbance, and the system is apt to cause hunting when the condensing pressure decreases excessively since it may cause two-phase state at the throttling device inlet and make a large disturbance to the system. The piston stroke length will oscillate only when the oscillation amplitudes of forces acting on the wobble plate are great enough, otherwise the piston stroke length will be kept invariable, and then the system instability rule is also suitable for the AAC system with a fixed displacement compressor. From the experimental results, it is concluded that the two-phase flow at the throttling device inlet or at the evaporator outlet is the necessary condition but not sufficient condition for system hunting. Finally, a new concept, conservative stable region, is proposed based on the experimental results and theoretical analysis.