One centrifugal compressor is applied for refrigeration and its working substance is R134a. The operating points obtained by using similar conversion at different rotation speeds are compared with the numerical results. They keep consistent with each other while the rotation speeds are lower, but the error between them will become large with the increasing of the rotation speed. Then the operating points are obtained when the working substance is air by using two similar conversion methods separately. Based on the comparison, it can be obtained that the result of keeping the specific volume ratio of inlet and outlet is more accurate than the result of maintaining Ma number. Then the test result is compared with the similarity result and the numerical result when the working substance is air. It is obtained that the similarity result is more consistent with the test result better than the numerical result and the trend of efficiency and pressure ratio change with the flow rate is consistent with the test result. In the process of similar conversion, the efficiency ${eta}$ is no useful for similitude design and it has less influence on the conversion result.