Development of a Small Centrifugal Fan with CFD

수치해석에 의한 소형 원심팬 개발

It is not easy to apply a small-sized centrifugal fan to the duct used for the thermal management of home electronic appliances due to complex design parameters of its blades and scroll. The main objective of this study was to develop the systematic process to design an optimal centrifugal fan based on the 3-dimensional configuration of blades obtained from the conceptual design program self-developed with the given design constraints such as the flow rate, the total pressure loss, the size of fan, and the number of rotation. The design process to find an optimal centrifugal fan for refrigerator was technologically linked in many ways. The complex grid generation system of the fan model included scroll was adopted for the numerical simulation. The FVM CFD code, FLUENT, was used to investigate the three dimensional flow pattern at the coordinate system of rotating frame and to check the optimal performance of the fan. By using this design process, a selected centrifugal fan was designed, numerically simulated, manufactured and experimentally tested in the wind tunnel. The performance curve of fan manufactured by NC process was compared with numerically obtained characteristic curve. The developed design method was proved into being excellent because these two curves were well matched.