• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.1107-1114
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• 2004

Axial fans are widely used for automotive engine cooling device due to their ability to produce high flow rate to keep engine cool. At the same time, the noise generated by these fans causes one of the most serious problems. Especially, engine cooling fan noise in idle condition of a car is noticeable. Therefore. the high efficient and low-noise fan is seriously needed. When a new fan system is designed, system resistance and non-uniform inflow are the key factors to get the high performance and low noise fan system. In this study, aerodynamic and acoustic calculations are carried out on the automotive cooling fan and system. Effects of various design parameters are studied through the free wake analysis and experiments. Better performance and noise characteristic are obtained for the new design fan using the methodology. Furthermore through the modification of the fan system geometry parameters, the fan system produce more flow rate and become less noisy.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2000.06a
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• pp.380-387
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• 2000

In this paper, a successful result of modification of an axial flow fan and a shroud for noise reduction of a window type air conditioner is presented especially in order to verify the importance of blade shape improvement and the searching for the optimal shape of shrouds. Effective ways to work out the result as mentioned above are to make the tip of the blade varied in thickness and to have special shapes. From the viewpoint of the shape in a shroud, several cases were examined and the particular value of a design parameter of the shroud was acquired to get the best noise reduction of an air conditioner. Through the application of the methods, the air conditioner became less noisy by 4.5 dB(A) in terms of air-borne noise produced only by the axial flow fan and consumed less energy by 20.9% compared to the current one.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2002.11b
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• pp.116-121
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• 2002

Axial fans are widely used in heavy machines due to their ability to produce high flow rate for cooling of engines. At the same time, the noise generated by these fans causes one of the most serious problems. This work is concerned with the low noise technique of discrete frequency noise. To calculate the unsteady resultant force over the fan blade in an unsymmetric engine room. Time-Marching Free-Wake Method is used. From the calculations of unsteady force on fan blades, noise signal of an engine cooling fan is calculated by using an acoustic similarity law. Noise optimization is obtained from Neural Network which is constructed based on the calculated flow rate and noise spectrum.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.37-42
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• 2001

A computerized axial flow fan design system is developed with the capabilities for predicting the aerodynamic performance and the noise characteristics of fan. In the present study, the basic fan blading design is made by combining vortex distribution scheme with camber line design, airfoil selection, blade thickness distribution and stacking of blade elements. With the designed fan blade geometry, the through-flow field and the performance of fan are analyzed by using the streamline curvature computing scheme with spanwise total pressure loss and flow deviation models. Fan noise is assumed to be generated due to the pressure fluctuation induced by wake vortices of fan blades and to radiate as dipole distribution. The vortex-induced fluctuating pressure on blade surface is calculated by combining thin airfoil theory and the predicted flow field data. The predicted performances, sound pressure level and noise directivity patterns of fan by the present method are favorably compared with the test data of actual fans. Furthermore, the present method is shown to be very useful in designing the blade geometry of new fan and optimizing design variables of the fan to achieve higher efficiency and lower noise level.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.377-385
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• 2013

In this study, the performance of an impeller according to blade length and pitch angle was studied experimentally by building a variable pitch impeller while changing blade length to review the effect of blade length and pitch angle on a fan's performance. The pitch angle was changed in six steps from $20^{\circ}{\sim}45^{\circ}$ at intervals of $5^{\circ}$ while the blade lengths were changed to 90 mm, 100 mm, 110 mm and 120 mm with an identical airfoil shape while carrying out the experiment. The results are summarized as follows : The air flow per static pressure of axial fans increased linearly with increase of pitch angle, but the high static pressure showed a decrease at a pitch angle of $35^{\circ}$. The shaft power increased proportionally to the pitch angle at all blade lengths; the larger the pitch angle, the larger the measured increase of shaft power. This is because the drag at the fan's front increases with the pitch angle. In the axial fans considered in this research, the flow and incre.

• Journal of KSNVE
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.661-669
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• 1996

Proposed is an aero-acoustic performance prediction method of axial fan. The fan aerodynamic performance is predicted by combining pitch-averaged quasi 3-D flow analysis with pressure loss models for blade boundary layer and wake, secondary flow, endwall boundary layer and tip leakage flows. Fan noise is assumed to be radiated as dipole distribution type, and its generation is assumed to be mainly due to the vortex street shed from blade trailing edge. The fluctuating pressure and lift on the blade surface are analyzed by incorporating the wake vortex stree shed from blade trailing edge. The fluctuating pressure and lift on the blade surface are analyzed by incorporating the wake vortex street model with thin airfoil theory. The aero-acoustic performance prediction results by the present method are in good agreement with the measured results of several axial fans. With the present prediction method, parametric studies are carried out to investigate the effects of blade chord length and spacing on the efficiency and the noise level of fan. In the case of lightly loaded fan, both efficiency improvement and noise reduction can be achieved by decreasing chord length or by increasing blade specing. However, when fan is designed at highly loaded condition, the noise reduction by increasing blade spacing penalizes the attaninable efficiency of fan.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.719-724
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• 2003

The present experimental study deals with noise reduction and improvements in cooling performance in a plasma display panel(PDP) television (TV). To reduce the noise, the effects of installation parameters are studied. The experimental parameters under investigation are the distance between the fan and the rear case of a PDP TV, position of the strut on the fan, and the fan RPM. The variance of RPM is the most significant facto., and a 250 RPM decrease from 910 RPM causes about 4㏈(A) reduction in the system noise. To increase performance, flow characteristics are investigated by using a visualization technique and measuring the volume flow rate. The visualized results show that a radial direction flow due to large system resistance is significant, and an axial velocity oscillation is observed from the measurement of the volume flow rate. To prevent both a radial direction flow and an axial velocity oscillation, sponges are inserted in the space between f3n and the rear case. Inserted sponges improve the volume flow rate of cooling fans up to 32% since they convert a radial direction flow to an axial direction flow. Also an axial velocity oscillation with large amplitude and low RPM disappears. Increasing volume flow rate causes the PDP TV to improve its cooling performance. Additionally the same volume flow rate can be obtained with a decreased fan speed due to the inserted sponge. Noise reductions of 4.2 ㏈(A) at the rear and 1.1 ㏈(A) at the front of the TV are obtained by the decreased RPM. An increase of 10% of the volume flow rate is also achieved by inserting sponges.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.566-576
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• 1995

A Computational code has been developed in order to design axial fans by the numerical optimization techniques incorporated with flow analysis code solving three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation. The steepest descent method and the conjugate gradient method are used to look for the search direction in the design space, and the golden section method is used for one-dimensional search. To solve the constrained optimization problem, sequential unconstrained minimization technique, SUMT, is used with imposed quadratic extended interior penalty functions. In the optimization of two-dimensional cascade design, the ratio of drag coefficient to lift coefficient is minimized by the design variables such as maximum thickness, maximum ordinate of camber and chord wise position of maximum ordinate. In the application of this numerical optimization technique to the design of an axial fan, the efficiency is maximized by the design variables related to the sweep angle distributed by quadratic function along the hub to tip of fan.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.318.2-318
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• 2002

Axial fans are widely used in heavy machines due to their ability to produce high flow rate fur cooling of engines. At the same time, the noise generated by these fans causes one of the most serious problems. This work is concerned with the low noise technique of discrete frequency noise. To calculate the unsteady resultant force over the fan blade in an unsymmetric engine room, Time-Marching Free-Wake Method is used. From the calculations of unsteady force on fan blades, noise signal of an engine cooling fan is calculated by using an acoustic similarity law. (omitted)

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.395-398
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• 2009

Currently, a new generation of ducted fan UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) is under development for a wide range of inspection, investigation and combat missions as well as for a variety of civil roles like traffic monitoring, meteorological studies, hazard mitigation etc. The current study presents extensive results obtained experimentally in order to investigate the tip clearance effects on performance characteristics of a ducted fan for small UAV systems. Three ducted fans having different tip clearance gap and with same rotor size were examined under three different yawed conditions of calibrated slanted hot-wire probe. Three dimensional velocity flow fields were measured from hub to tip at outlet of the ducted fan. The analysis of data were done by PLEAT (Phase locked Ensemble Averaging Technique) and three non-linear differential equations were solved simultaneously by using Newton -Rhapson numerical method. Flow field characteristics such as tip vortex and secondary flow were confirmed through axial, radial and tangential velocity contour plots. At the same time, the effects of tip clearance on axial thrust and input power were also investigated by using wind tunnel measurement system. For enhancing the performance of ducted fan, tip clearance level should be as small as possible.