A numerical study of the performance of a turbomolecular pump

Abstract

In the free molecular flow range, the pumping performance of a turbomolecular pump has been predicted by calculation of the transmission probability which employs the integral method and the test particle Monte-Carlo method. Also, new approximate method combining the double stage solutions, so called double-approximation, is presented here. The calculated values of transmission probability for the single stage agree quantitatively with the previous known numerical results. For a six-stage pump, the Monte-Carlo method is employed to calculate the overall transmission probability for the entire set of blade rows. When the results of the approximate method combining the single stage solutions are compared with those of the Monte-Carlo method at dimensionless blade velocity ratio C=0.4, the previous known approximate method overestimates as much as 34% than does the Monte-Carlo method. But, the new approximate method gives more accurate results, whose relative error is 10% compared to the Monte-Carlo method, than does the previous approximate method.