This work presents an experimental study to investigate the influence of step volute tongue on aerodynamic performance and aeroacoustic behavior of a forward-curved fan. The noise characteristics are analyzed and controlled based on measured acoustic pressures for various stepped tongues; meanwhile, fan performance is detected and optimized. The design parameters of the stepped tongues are presented to provide significant physical insight into increasing the static pressure as well as the efficiency of static pressure and reducing the fan noise generation. The comparison of the test results indicates that the improved static pressure and its efficiency of the HLHL model have increased by 15.67 Pa and 3.57%, respectively, by comparing with those of the baseline model. At 740 m3/h, a great correlation between different arrays of stepped tongue and the noise generation was observed. The tonal noise level of the HLHL model is a better optimization scheme because it decreases as much as 1.2 dB for the noise generation of forward-curved fan. In particular, it is found that some stepped tongues of the volute tongue achieved the goal of reducing noise generation and improving the performance of fan by experimental measurement at the same time.

The effects of single-arc blade profile length on the performance of a forward multiblade fan are investigated in this paper by computational fluid dynamics and experimental measurement. The present work emphasizes that the use of a properly reduced blade inlet angle (β1A) and properly improved blade outlet angle (β2A) is to increase the length blade profile, which suggests a good physical understanding of internal complex flow characteristics and the aerodynamic performance of the fan. Numerical results indicate that the gradient of the absolute velocity among the blades in model-L (reducing the blade inlet angle and improving blade outlet angle) is clearly lower than that of the baseline model and model-S (improving the blade inlet angle and reducing blade outlet angle), where a number of secondary flows arise on the exit surface of baseline model and model-S. However, no secondary flow occurs in model-L, and the flow loss at the exit surface of the volute (scroll-shaped flow patterns) for model-L is obviously lower than that of the baseline model at the design point. The comparison of the test results further shows that to improve the blade profile length is to increase the static pressure and the efficiency of the static pressure, since the improved static pressure of the model-L rises as much as 22.5 Pa and 26.2%, and the improved static pressure efficiency of the model-L rises as much as 5 % at the design flow rates. It is further indicated that increasing the blade working area provides significant physical insight into increasing the static pressure, total pressure, the efficiency of the static pressure and the total pressure efficiency.

A method of optimization design for the blade profile of a centrifugal impeller by controlling velocity distribution is presented, and a plenum fan is successfully designed. This method is based on the inner flow calculation inside the centrifugal impeller, and is related to the distribution of relative velocity. The results show that after optimization, the boundary layer separation on the suction surface has been inhibited and the stability of plenum fan is improved. The flow at the impeller outlet is also studied, and the jet-wake pattern at the impeller outlet is improved obviously by optimization. The calculation result shows that the static pressure and static pressure efficiency can be increased by 15.4% and 21.4% respectively.

The unsteady flow characteristics of a forward multi-wing centrifugal fan under a low flow rate are studied using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. This paper emphasizes the eddy current distribution in terms of the Q criterion method, as well as pressure fluctuation, frequency spectrum, and kinetic energy spectrum analysis of internal monitoring points in a forward multi-wing centrifugal fan. The numerical results show that abnormal eddies mainly appear at the volute outlet and near the volute tongue, boundary layer separation occurs near the suction surface of the blade, and shedding eddies appear at the trailing edge of the blade with the time evolution. The unsteady flow characteristics of a forward multi-wing centrifugal fan at a small flow rate provide significant physical insight into understanding the internal flow law.

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