• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.185-192
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• 2004

The aeroacoustic characteristics of a centrifugal fan for a vacuum cleaner and its noise reduction method are studied in this paper. The major noise source of a vacuum cleaner is the centrifugal fan. The impeller of the fan rotates at over 30000 rpm, and generates very high-level noise. It was revealed that the dominant noise source is the aerodynamic interaction between the rotating impeller and stationary diffuser. The directivity of acoustic pressure showed that most of the noise propagates backward direction of the fan-motor assembly. In order to reduce the high tonal sound generated from the aerodynamic interaction, unevenly pitched impeller and diffuser, and tapered impeller designs were proposed and experiments were performed. Uneven pitch design of the impeller changes the sound quality while the overall sound power level (SPL) and the performance remains similar. The effect of the tapered design of impeller was evaluated. The trailing edge of the tapered fan is inclined. This reduces the flow interaction between the rotating impeller and the stationary diffuser because of some phase shifts. The static efficiency of the new impeller design is slightly lower than the previous design. However, the overall SPL is reduced by about 4 dB(A). The SPL of the fundamental blade passing frequency (BPF) is reduced by about 6 dB (A) and the 2$\^$nd/ BPF is reduced about 20 dB (A). The vacuum cleaner with the tapered impeller design produces lower noise level than the previous one, and the strong tonal sound was dramatically reduced.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.205-211
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• 2018

Performance evaluation of a regenerative pump has been compared with a conventional open channel impeller and a S-shaped continuous impeller designed newly. To analyze flow field for both pumps, analysis code, CFX, is employed. Unstructured grids are used to represent a composite geometryincluding blade, casing and ducts. Throughout the comparisons between numerical simulation and experiments, the predicted efficiency has a good agreement with the experimental one. It is noted that the pump having a S-shaped continuous impeller is about 4.8 percent more efficient than conventional one, which is due to the relatively large pressure increase. Detailed flow field inside the pump is also analyzed and compared.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.633-638
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• 2002

The vacuum cleaner that has no dust bag generates very high level annoying noise. The dominant noise source is the 2$\^$nd/ BPF tone of the rotating impeller. In order to reduce the noise, we identify the acoustic characteristics and reduce the noise of the vacuum cleaner and centrifugal fan. The resonance phenomenon is observed in blade passages and we found out that the resonance frequency is very close to the 2$\^$nd/ BPF. In order to reduce this high-level peak noise, new impeller is designed in this paper. The trailing edge of new impeller is inclined and this makes the flow interactions between the rotating impeller and the stationary diffuser vane occurs with some phase shift. The performance of new impeller is similar to the old one but the overall SPL is reduced about 3.6dBA. The SPL of BPF is reduced about 6dBA and 2$\^$nd/ BPF is reduced about 20dBA. The vacuum cleaner, which uses newly developed centrifugal fan, generate more comfortable noise than the old model and the strong tonal sound was dramatically reduced.

• Journal of KSNVE
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.955-965
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• 1999

Centrifugal fans are widely used and the noise generated by the 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 form 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 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 by the unsteady Bernoulli equation. Lowson's method is used to predict the acoustic source. 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 sound.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.21-26
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• 2011

Seawater lift pump systems are responsible for maintaining open canal levels to provide the suction flow of circulating water pumps at the set point. The objective of this paper is to design a 2-stage mixed flow pump (for seawater lifting), investigate the new impeller modeling method, and performance improvements of the impeller by using a commercial CFD code. The rotating speed of the impeller is 1,750 rpm with a flow rate of 2,700 m3/h. A finite volume method with a structured mesh and realized k-${\varepsilon}$ turbulent model is used to guarantee a more accurate prediction of turbulent flow in the pump impeller. The performance variables such as the static head, brake horsepower, and efficiency of the mixed flow pump are compared based on changes in the impeller blade shape.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.12a
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• pp.572-577
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• 2004

This paper presents numerical study on the performance improvement of the sirocco fan in a range hood. The performance of sirocco fan means a higher flowrate, a higher static pressure and a lower required motor power in a fixed geometry constraint. Various impeller geometric parameters, such as blade profile, blade diameter, blade thickness profile and blade exit angle, were investigated by numerically and the results were compared with each other to know the effects on the performance. In this approach, the volute geometry were fixed with the original shape. The numerical results show that the blade profile with airfoil shape and small exit blade thickness increases the performance. The blade exit angle shows optimum angle within a varied range. The efficiency of the optimized exit angle was about $10\%$ higher than the base blade exit angle and the static pressure was about $28\%$ higher at the flow coefficient 0.22.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.18 no.9
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• pp.937-942
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• 2008

This paper presents a case history on failures of impeller and shaft due to pressure pulsation at single stage feed water pumps in 700 MW nuclear power plant during commissioning operation. The pumps had been service and had run for approximately $40{\sim}50$ hours. For the most part, the failures of impeller occurred with the presence of a number of fatigue cracks. All cracks were associated with the deleterious surface layer of impeller by visual and metallurgical examination. On-site testing and analytical approach was performed on the systems to diagnose the problem and develop a solution to reduce the effect of exciting sources. A major concern at high-energy centrifugal pump is the pressure pulsation created from trailing edge of the Impeller blade, flow separation and recirculation at centrifugal pumps of partial load. Pressure pulsation due to the interaction generating between impeller and casing coincided with natural frequencies of the impeller and shaft system during 1ow load operation. It was identified that dynamic stress exceeding the fatigue strength of the material at the thin shroud section due to the hydraulic instability at running condition below BEP.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.12a
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• pp.402-407
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• 2002

A commercial CFD code is applied to analyze the 3-D viscous flow field within vertical multi-stage centrifugal pimp including impeller with 6 blades and guide vane with 11 blades and is performed by changing flow rate from 10 to $26\;m^3/h$ at the constant 3500rpm. The purpose of this 3-D numerical simulation is to confirm how much the effect of blade inlet angle of guide vane has an influence on the performance of vertical multi-stage centrifugal pimp. these results performed by $20^{\circ},\;30^{\circ}$ inlet angle of guide vane are compared with grundfos performance data. The vertical multi-stage pump consist of the impeller, guide vane, and cylinder. The characteristics such as total pressure coefficient total heat shaft horse power, power efficiency, discharge coefficient are represented according to flow rate changing.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.12a
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• pp.111-115
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• 2002

The objective of this work is to develop improved slip factor model and correction method to predict flow through impeller in forward-curved centrifugal fan by investigating the validity of various slip factor models. Both steady and unsteady three-dimensional CFD analyses were performed with a commercial code tn validate the slip factor model and the correction method. The results show that the improved slip factor model presented in this paper could provide more accurate predictions for forward-curved centrifugal impeller than the other slip factor models since the presented model takes into account the effect of blade curvature. The comparison with CFD results also shows that the improved slip factor model coupled with the present correction method provides accurate predictions for mass-averaged absolute circumferential velocity at the exit of impeller near and above the flow rate of peaktotal pressure coefficient.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.8 no.1 s.28
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• pp.7-15
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• 2005

Tip clearance of centrifugal compressor affects the performance. Larger tip clearance results in lower efficiency. What really affects the performance is the running tip clearance, not the cold tip clearance. When the compressor is operating, blade strain and the pressure difference between impeller backplate and hub affects the running tip clearance. This paper describes measured running tip clearance and its effects on the performance of centrifugal compressor. Cold tip clearance before operation was 0.4 mm and running tip clearance varied from 0.86 mm to 0.25 mm with impeller exit pressure. As the pressure at impeller exit increases, the running tip clearance tends to decreases. The target running tip clearance for Compressor at $100\%$ speed was 0.3 mm, and it turned out to be exactly 0.30 mm from experiment.