Numerical Investigation into Particle Migration Characteristics in Hydraulic Oil Filtration

An oil filter is a necessary and significant part of many manufacturing processes and equipment. Unlike the structural design and filter material selection, the particle movement in the filter during filtration is the fundamental factor influencing the filter’s performance, but this has not attracted enough attention. Due to the small size and large number of particles in the filter, it is difficult to monitor every particle’s movement. Therefore, this work used a hydraulic oil filter as a case study. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was coupled with the Discrete Phase Model (DPM) to investigate the particle motion in the filter. A filter boundary function was programmed to simulate the filter cartridge zone. The effects of inlet velocity and oil temperature/viscosity on the particle movement and filtration performance were studied. The results showed that a low-velocity zone existed and trapped some contaminant particles, particularly for particles with large Stokes numbers. The results also demonstrated that increased temperature induced an apparent reduction in filtering efficiency within the first 1.8 s from 0.61 to 0.49 when the temperature increased from 15 °C to 70 °C for 25 μm particles.