多目的最適化による三次元小弦節比翼列ディフューザの設計

A three-dimensional blade of a low solidity circular cascade diffuser in centrifugal blowers is designed by means of a multi-point optimization technique. The optimization aims at improving static pressure coefficient at a design point and at a small flow rate condition. Moreover, a clear definition of secondary flow expressed by positive radial velocity at hub side is taken into consideration in constraints. The number of design parameters for three-dimensional blade reaches to 10 in this study, such as a radial gap, a radial chord length and mean camber angle distribution of the LSD blade with five control points, control point between hub and shroud with two design freedom. Optimization results show clear Pareto front and selected optimum design shows good improvement of pressure rise in diffuser at small flow rate conditions. It is found that three-dimensional blade has advantage to stabilize the secondary flow effect with improving pressure recovery of the low solidity circular cascade diffuser.

A Low Solidity circular cascade Diffuser (LSD) in a centrifugal blower is designed by means of multi-objective optimization technique. An optimization code with a meta-model assisted evolutionary algorithm is used with a commercial CFD code ANSYS-CFX. The optimization is aiming at improving the static pressure coefficient at design point and at small flow rate condition while constraining the slope of the lift coefficient curve. Seven detailed design parameters describing the shape and position of the LSD vane were introduced. Moreover, a small tip clearance of the LSD blade was applied in order to activate and to stabilize the secondary flow effect at small flow rate conditions. The optimized LSD blade has been manufactured and the characteristic of optimized LSD is confirmed by the experimental test rig. Optimized LSD has an extended operating range of 114 % towards smaller flow rate as compared to the baseline design without deteriorating the diffuser pressure recovery at design point. The detailed flow in the diffuser is also confirmed by means of a Particle Image Velocimetery (PIV). The flow was compared between in the cases with and without tip clearance. In spite of the fluctuating flow at the diffuser inlet, secondary flow spreads to the whole area of LSD blade pitch stably. Stable secondary flow suppresses flow separation at the suction surface of the LSD. It is found that the optimized LSD blade shows good improvement of the blade loading in the whole operating range, while at small flow rate the flow separation on the LSD blade has been successfully suppressed by the secondary flow effect.

The understanding of pressure fluctuation mechanism is the basis for stability and noise analysis in pumps. In this article, numerical study was carried out for the pressure fluctuation within the impeller and the guide vane of a low specific speed mixed-flow pump. Structured mesh was adopted in the whole flow passage. The numerical approach was validated by comparing with the experimental data of external characteristics and fluctuation in the guide vane passage. Through MATLAB code and Fourier analysis, the pressure fluctuation in the whole flow passage was obtained at four flow rate conditions. It is found that pressure fluctuation due to rotor–stator interaction is first enhanced and then weakened along the stream-wise direction with the maximal value located near the guide vane inlet. As a result of the structure design of passage and secondary flow, some obvious vortexes will form at the hub region near the pressure surface at small flow rate conditions, thus aggravating pressure fluctuation therein. On the whole, pressure fluctuation at small flow rate conditions is more remarkable with the fluctuation period being more disordered; the fluctuation intensity is higher in the guide vane than the impeller, while the area of strong fluctuation is also wider.

An experimental study of the effect of wake disturbance frequency on the secondary flow vortices in a two-dimensional linear cascade is presented. The flow Reynolds numbers, based on exit velocity and suction side surface length were 25,000, 50,000 and 85,000. Secondary flow was visualized by injecting smoke into the boundary layer and illuminating it with a laser light sheet located at the exit of the cascade. To simulate wakes from upstream blade rows, a set of spanwise cylinders were traversed across the front of the blade row. The flow visualization results with a single wake disturbance reveal that the recovery time of the secondary flow vortex structure decreases as the wake traverse velocity is increased. The results of flow visualization with multiple wakes showed that wake disturbance frequencies below the axial chord flow frequency allowed complete recovery of the secondary flow vortex structure before the next wake encounters the blade leading edge. Wake disturbance frequencies that exceeded the axial chord flow frequency resulted in no observable recovery of the secondary flow vortex structure. Axial chord flow frequency is defined as the axial velocity in the cascade divided by the axial chord length of the turbine blade. [S0098-2202(00)02203-3]

This paper describes in detailed flow field in a centrifugal compressor with a vaned diffuser at off design point. Especially, we conducted both the experimental and numerical analysis in order to investigate the evolution process of a diffuser stall. At the stall point, the diffuser stall was initiated and rotated near the shroud side in the vaneless space. Furthermore, the diffuser stall was developed to a stage stall cell, as the mass flow was decreased. The developed stall cell was rotated within both the impeller and diffuser passages. The evolution process of the diffuser stall had three stall forms. First, the diffuser stall was rotating near the shroud side. Then, the diffuser stall shifted to the hub side and moved into the impeller passages. Finally, a stage stall was generated. From computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, a tornado-type vortex was generated first, near the hub side of the diffuser leading edge, when the diffuser stall was shifted to the hub side. Next, a throat area blockage was formed near the hub side because of the boundary layer separation in the vaneless space. Finally, the blockage within the diffuser passages expanded to the impeller passages and developed into a stage stall. From the pressure measurements along the impeller and diffuser passages, the magnitude of pressure fluctuation on the casing wall of the diffuser throat area also suddenly increased when the diffuser stall shifted to the hub side. Therefore, the evolution area of the diffuser stall was caused by the evolution of the blockage near the throat area of the diffuser passage.

An apparatus and method for reducing noise within the fuselage of a propeller driven aircraft. In one embodiment the propeller blades are spaced apart and in front of an offset inlet. The inlet provides air to a gas turbine engine powering the propeller, and also to a scavenge duct. The propeller blades and inlet are spaced apart such that during cruise conditions for the aircraft, the trailing edge of the propeller blades are spaced apart from the inlet by more than one-fourth of the chord length of the propeller blades, and less than about the chord length of the propeller blades. This spacing reduces the aerodynamic interaction between the propeller blades and a bubble of partially stagnated air in front of the inlet. In another embodiment, the scavenge duct is constructed such that it flows an increased amount of air, thus allowing the inlet duct to flow an increased amount of air. In this second embodiment, the engine duct flows more than about 40% of the total amount of air entering the inlet duct, and less than about 60% of that total airflow. In this manner the size of the slightly stagnated bubble in front of the inlet duct is reduced.

A small wind turbine blade was designed and optimized in this research paper. The blade plays an important role, because it is the most important part of the energy absorption system. Consequently, the blade has to be designed carefully to enable to absorb energy with its greatest efficiency. The main objective of this paper is to optimized blade number and selection of tip speed ratio corresponding to the solidity. The power performance of small horizontal axis wind turbines was simulated in detail using blade element momentum methods (BEM). In this paper for wind blade design various factors such as tip loss, hub loss, drag coefficient, and wake were considered. The design process includes the selection of the wind turbine type and the determination of the blade airfoil, twist angle distribution along the radius, and chord length distribution along the radius. A parametric study that will determine if the optimized values of blade twist angle and chord length create the most efficient blade geometry. The 3-bladed, 5-bladed and 7-bladed rotor achieved maximum values of Cp 0.46, 0.5 and 0.48 at the tip speed ratio 7, 5 and 4 respectively. It was observed that using BEM theory, maximum Cp varied with strongly solidity and weakly with the blade number. The studies showed that the power coefficient increases upto blade number B = 5, while the blade number if increased above 5 then the power coefficient decreases at operating pitch angle equal to 3°. Highest Cp would have solidity between 4% to 6% for number of blade 3 and design point tip speed ratio of about "7". Highest Cp would have solidity ranging from 5% to 10% for number of blade 5 and 7 and design point tip speed ratio of about 5 and 4 respectively.

An efficient response surface method and its application to structural reliability and reliability-basedoptimization

Experiments were conducted for the flow in a straight-walled 3D diffuser fed by a fully developed turbulent duct flow. Previous work found that this diffuser has a stable 3D separation bubble whose configuration is affected by the secondary flows in the upstream duct. Dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators were used to produce low-momentum wall jets to determine if the separation behavior could be modified by weak forcing. Actuators producing a streamwise force along the wall where separation occurred in the baseline flow had a relatively small effect. However, spanwise acting plasma actuators that produced a pair of streamwise vortices in the inlet section of the diffuser had a strong effect on the diffuser pressure recovery. The diffuser performance could be either improved or degraded depending on the actuation parameters, including the actuator modulation frequency, duty cycle, and drive voltage. Velocity profile measurements in the diffuser inlet showed that the streamwise vortices affect the uniformity of the streamwise mean velocity accounting for some of the performance changes. However, phase-locked hotwire measurements at the diffuser exit indicate that the periodic nature of the forcing also plays an important role for cases with enhanced pressure recovery.

A centrifugal blower represents the main noise source in a vacuum cleaner. Noise emitted by the centrifugal blower working as a suction unit has aerodynamic, mechanical, and electromagnetic noise origins. Noise emitted by a suction unit consists of airborne and structure-borne noise. The contribution of the individual noise source to the total noise level depends on the geometry of the suction unit, rotational speed and on the operating conditions. Operating conditions of a suction unit depend on the amount of dust particles in the dust bag and are constantly changing during operation until a zero flow rate is reached. In order to reduce noise of suction unit at broad range of operating conditions, an identification of noise sources needs to be performed. Identification of most important noise sources on the centrifugal blower was performed with an acoustic camera at the design and off-design operation conditions. From the analyses we can conclude that the rotational noise usually prevails at the design point of operation, and that the nonrotational noise prevails at off-design operation. The main source of noise within a suction unit can be attributed to the aerodynamically generated noise, at the design as well as at off-design operation.

The interaction between impeller and diffuser is considered to have strong influence on the flow in centrifugal compressors. However, the knowledge about this influence is still not satisfying. This two-part paper presents an experimental investigation of the effect of impeller-diffuser interaction on the unsteady and the time averaged flow field configuration in impeller and diffuser and the performance of these components. The flat wedge vaned diffuser of the investigated compressor allows an independent adjustment of diffuser vane angle and radial gap between impeller exit and diffuser vane inlet. Attention is mainly directed to the radial gap, as it determines the intensity of the impeller-diffuser interaction. Part I deals with the integral flow losses and the diffusion in impeller, diffuser and the entire compressor. An extensive test series with steady probe measurements at impeller exit and diffuser exit was performed at 10 different diffuser geometries and different operating points. The results show that in most cases smaller radial gaps are leading to a more homogeneous flow field at diffuser vane exit and to a higher diffuser pressure recovery resulting in a higher compressor efficiency. On the other hand, impeller efficiency is hardly affected by the radial gap. In Part II, measurements with a laser-2-focus velocimeter are presented illuminating the reasons for the effects found. The experimental results are published as an open CFD test case under the name “Radiver.”

The interaction between impeller and diffuser is considered to have strong influence on the flow in highly loaded centrifugal compressors. However, the knowledge about this influence is still not satisfying. This two-part paper presents an experimental investigation of the effect of impeller-diffuser interaction on the unsteady and the time averaged flow configuration in impeller and diffuser and the performance of these components. The flat wedge vaned diffuser of the investigated stage allows an independent adjustment of diffuser vane angle and radial gap between impeller exit and diffuser vane inlet. Attention is mainly directed to the radial gap, as it determines the intensity of the impeller-diffuser interaction. Part I deals with the integral flow losses and the diffusion in impeller, diffuser and the entire compressor. An extensive test series with steady probe measurements at impeller exit and diffuser exit was performed at 10 different diffuser geometries and different operating points. The results show that in most cases smaller radial gaps are leading to a more homogeneous flow field at diffuser vane exit and to a higher diffuser pressure recovery resulting in a higher compressor efficiency. On the other hand, impeller efficiency is hardly affected by the radial gap. In part II measurements with a laser-2-focus velocimeter are presented illuminating the reasons for the effects found. The experimental results are intended to be published as an open CFD testcase under the name “Radiver”.

Comparison of unshrouded impeller analysis and experiment

The secondary flow in the impeller of an axial flow pump is an important factor affecting the safe and stable operation of the unit. However, there is still a lack of systematic research on the generation mechanism of secondary flow and corresponding control strategies in axial flow pumps. To better understand the secondary flow characteristics in the axial flow pump, based on the momentum equation of relative motion, the basic distribution characteristics of the potential rothalpy gradient (PRG, or the reduced static pressure gradient) in the impeller of an axial flow pump were systematically analyzed. Two typical secondary flows were found, namely, trailing-edge hub-shroud type secondary flow at the blade outlet hub side and leading-edge hub-shroud type secondary flow at the blade inlet shroud side. The generation of these secondary flows is directly related to the effect of natural adverse PRG. A new blade design method is proposed. The essential idea of this method is to give the blade loading strategy based on grasping the macro-flow characteristics and control PRG characteristics by adjusting the real blade loading δp (i.e., the static pressure difference between the blade pressure and suction surfaces) and, thereby, control the above-mentioned secondary flows. The application of an axial flow pump showed that the blades designed based on this method can effectively control these secondary flows and reduce pressure fluctuations. The average decrease in pressure fluctuation on the blade inlet shroud side and the outlet hub side is 17.79% and 20.03%, respectively.

Centrifugal blowers are widely used turbomachines equipment in all kinds of modern and domestic life. Manufacturing of blowers seldom follow an optimum design solution for individual blower. Although centrifugal blowers are developed as highly efficient machines, design is still based on various empirical and semi empirical rules proposed by fan designers. There are different methodologies used to design the impeller and other components of blowers. The objective of present study is to study explicit design methodologies and tracing unified design to get better design point performance. This unified design methodology is based more on fundamental concepts and minimum assumptions. Parametric study is also carried out for the effect of design parameters on pressure ratio and their interdependency in the design. The code is developed based on a unified design using C programming. Numerical analysis is carried out to check the flow parameters inside the blower. Two blowers, one based on the present design and other on industrial design, are developed with a standard OEM blower manufacturing unit. A comparison of both designs is done based on experimental performance analysis as per IS standard. The results suggest better efficiency and more flow rate for the same pressure head in case of the present design compared with industrial one.