A numerical study on the acoustic characteristics of centrifugal impeller with small added vane

작은 안내 깃이 붙은 원심형 임펠러의 소음 특성에 대한 연구

Centrifugal fans are widely used in industrial practices but the noise generated by these machines causes one of the most serious problems. In general, the centrifugal fan noise is often dominated by tones at BPF(blade passage frequency) and its higher harmonics. This is a consequence of the strong interaction between the flow discharged from the impeller and the cutoff in the easing. However, only a few researches have been carried out on predicting the noise because of the difficulty in obtaining detailed information about the flow field and casing effects on noise radiation. The objective of this study is to develop a prediction method for the unsteady flow field and the acoustic pressure field of a centrifugal fan, and to calculate the effects of small vanes that are attached in original impeller - Splitter impeller. We assume that the impeller rotates with a constant angular velocity and the flow field around the impeller is incompressible and inviscid. So, a discrete vortex method (DVM) is used to model the centrifugal fan and to calculate the flow field. The force of each element on the blade is calculated by the unsteady Bernoulli equation. Lowson's method is used to predict the acoustic source. The splitter impeller changes the acoustic characteristics as well as performance. Two-splitter type impeller and splitter impeller which splitter locates in jet region are good for acoustic characteristics.