Abstract: Artificial neural network (ANN)was utilized as a new method to calculate the thermodynamic performance of refrigeration compressors. However, there are some shortcomings in the previous study. A modified ANN method is developed by taking into accounts physical features of the classical thermodynamic model of refrigeration compressors. The multilayer forward ANN in the new method is of less inputs than the old one, thus its structure is compact. The inputs and outputs are naturally normalized. Therefore, no operation on normalization or denomalization is needled. Several kinds of small-scale refrigeration compressors are modeled with the presented ANN method, satisfactory precision and generalization are obtained.

Key words: Artificial neural network, Refrigeration compressor, Thermodynamic calculation