• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.12a
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• pp.129-136
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• 2000

Centrifugal fans are widely used and 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 casing. 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.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.218-226
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• 2017

Severe radial thrust under off-design operating conditions can be a harmful factor for centrifugal pumps. In the present work, effects of geometry of a double volute casing on the hydrodynamic performance of a centrifugal pump have been investigated focusing on off-design conditions. Three-dimensional steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes analysis was carried out by using shear stress transport turbulence model. Numerical results for the hydrodynamic performance of the centrifugal pump were validated compared with experimental data. The hydraulic efficiency and radial thrust coefficient were used as performance parameters to evaluate the hydrodynamic characteristics of the centrifugal pump. The cross-sectional area ratio of the volute casing, the expansion coefficient of the rib structure, the distance between the rib starting point and volute entrance, and radius and width of the volute entrance, and length of the rib structure, were selected as geometric parameters. Results of the parametric study show that the performance parameters are significantly affected by the geometric variables and operating conditions. Optimal configurations of the double volute casing based on the design of experiments technique show outstanding performance in terms of the efficiency and radial thrust coefficient.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.627-632
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• 2011

The internal broadband noise of a centrifugal fan in a household refrigerator is predicted by using hybrid CAA technique based on stochastic turbulent synthetic model. First, the unsteady flow field around the centrifugal fan is predicted using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. Then, the turbulent flow field is synthesized by applying the stochastic turbulent synthetic technique to the predicted flow field. The aerodynamic noise sources of the centrifugal fan are modeled on a basis of the synthesized turbulent field. Finally, the broadband noise of the centrifugal fan is predicted using Boundary Element Method (BEM) and the modeled sources. The predicted result is compared with the experimental data. It is found that the predicted result closely follows the experimental data. The proposed method can be used as an effective tool for designing low-noise fans without expensive computational cost required generally for the LES and DNS simulations to resolve the turbulence flow field responsible for the broadband noise.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.29 no.7 s.238
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• pp.784-794
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• 2005

In the very low specific speed range ($n_s=0.24$ < 0.25, non-dimensional), the efficiency of centrifugal pump designed by a conventional method is very low in common. Therefore, positive-displacement pumps have long been used widely. Recently, since the centrifugal pumps are becoming higher in rotational speed and smaller in size, there expects to develop a new centrifugal pump with a high performance to replace the positive-displacement pumps. The purpose of this study is to investigate the internal flow characteristics of a very low specific speed centrifugal pump and to examine the effect of internal flow pattern on pump performance. The results show that the theoretical head definition of semi-open impeller should be revised by the consideration of high slip factor in the semi-open impeller, and the leakage flow through the tip clearance results in a large effect on the impeller internal flow. Strong reverse flow at the outlet of semi-open impeller reduces the absolute tangential velocity considerably, and the decreased absolute tangential velocity increasese the slip factor with the reduction of theoretical head.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.9 no.1 s.34
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• pp.32-39
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• 2006

Recently, according to the trend of small size in scale and high speed in rotation of turbomachinery, very low specific speed centrifugal pump is taking a growing interest because the pump is characterized by high head and low flow rate with convenience of manufacturing and maintenance compared with conventional positive displacement pump. However, the efficiency of the very low specific speed centrifugal pump drops rapidly with the decrease of specific speed. The purpose of this study is nor only to examine the influence of casing type on the performance of centrifugal pump in the range of very low specific speed but also to determine the proper casing type for the improvement of pump performance. The results show that circular casing is suitable for the centrifugal pump in the range of very low specific speed and the influence of impeller configuration on the pump performance is very small. Radial thrust in the circular and volute casings is considerably small in the range of very low specific speed.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.9 no.1 s.34
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• pp.40-46
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• 2006

Efficiency of a centrifugal pump is known to drop rapidly with a decrease of specific speed $n_s$. However, below $n_s=60\;[min^{-1},\;m^3/min,\;m]$, the pump characteristics are not yet clear. Therefore, present study is aimed to investigate the influence of large change of specific speed on the performance of a very low specific speed centrifugal pump. Moreover, influence of impeller configuration on the performance of very low specific speed pump is investigated. The results show that very low specific speed can be accomplished by reducing volute throat sectional area using circular spacer. Influence of the spacer's location and configuration in the discharge passage on the pump performance is very small. Best efficiency of very low specific speed centrifugal pump decreases proportionally to the specific speed but the best efficiency decreases on a large scale in the range of $n_s<40$. Influence of impeller configuration on the pump performance and radial thrust of centrifugal pump are considerably small in the range of extremely low specific speed $(n_s=25)$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.213-217
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• 2008

This paper describes an application of centrifugal compressor optimization system, in which the blade profile of impeller is represented with NURBS(Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline) curve. A commercial CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics) program named NUMECA fine/turbo was used to evaluate the performance of the whole centrifugal compressor flow passage including impeller and diffuser. The whole optimization design system was integrated based on iSIGHT, a commercial integration and optimization software, which provides a direct application of some optimization algorithms. To insure the practicability of optimization, the performance of centrifugal compressor under all condition was concerned during the optimizing process. That means a compositive object function considering the aerodynamic efficiency, pressure ratio and mass flow rate under different work condition was applied by using different weight number for different conditions. Using the optimization method described in this paper, an optimized design of the impeller blade of centrifugal compressor was obtained. Comparing to the original design, optimized design has a better performance not only under the design work condition, but also the off-design work condition including near stall and near choke condition.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.40-47
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• 2014

Interaction between the unsteady flow emitted from the blade of the centrifugal fan and the volute tongue region of fan duct is known as the main noise source of the centrifugal fan. In this paper, the relative contributions of the volute tongue region of the centrifugal fan is analyzed to utilize as the foundation data of low noise design. The internal hybrid CAA (Computational Aero-Acoustics) method is used to predict noise radiated from the main noise source. This method is the noise prediction technique using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), Acoustic analogy, and BEM(Boundary Element Method). The relative contributions of the centrifugal fan volute tongue region using the hybrid CAA method show that the region between the cut-off and the scroll has high contribution than the region between the cut-off and the outlet and the hub region of blade has high contribution than the shroud region of blade. These results is utilized as the important data for the development of low noise centrifugal fan.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.25 no.9
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• pp.1157-1164
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• 2001

Centrifugal fans are widely used and 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 casing. However, only a few research 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 understand the generation mechanism of sound and to develop a prediction method for the unsteady flow field and the acoustic pressure field of a centrifugal fan. We assume that the impeller rotates with a constant angular velocity and the flow field of 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. Lowsons method is used to predict the acoustic source. In order to compare the experimental data, a centrifugal impeller and wedge introduced by Weidemann are used in the numerical calculation and the results are compared with the experimental data. Reasonable results are obtained not only for the peak frequencies but also for the amplitudes of the tonal.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.391-398
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• 2012

In this paper, prediction of centrifugal fan was conducted through combination the hybrid CAA method which was used to predict the fan noise with the FRPM technique which was used to generate the broadband noise source. Firstly, flow field surround the centrifugal fan was computed using the RANS equations and noise source region was deducted from the computed flow field. Then the FRPM technique was applied to the source region for generation of turbulence which satisfies the stochastic features. The noise source of the centrifugal fan was modeled by applying the acoustic analogy to the synthesized flow field from the computed and generated flow fields. Finally, the broadband noise of the centrifugal fan was predicted through combination the modeled noise source with the linear propagation which was realized using the boundary element method. It was confirmed that the proposed technique is efficient to predict the tonal and broadband noises of centrifugal fan through comparison with the measured data.