• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.103-111
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• 2024

Axial-flow fans are used to transport fluids in relatively low-pressure flow regimes, and a variety of design variables are employed. The tip geometry of an axial fan plays a dominant role in its flow and noise performance, and two of the most prominent flow phenomena are the tip vortex and the tip leakage vortex that occur at the tip of the blade. Various studies have been conducted to control these three-dimensional flow structures, and winglet geometries have been developed in the aircraft field to suppress wingtip vortices and increase efficiency. In this study, a numerical and experimental study was conducted to analyze the effect of winglet geometry applied to an axial fan blade for an air conditioner outdoor unit. The unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equation and the FfocwsWilliams and Hawkings (FW-H) equation were numerically solved based on computational fluid dynamics techniques to analyze the three-dimensional flow structure and flow noise numerically, and the validity of the numerical method was verified by comparison with experimental results. The differences in the formation of tip vortex and tip leakage vortex depending on the winglet geometry were compared through a three-dimensional flow field, and the resulting aerodynamic performance was quantitatively compared. In addition, the effect of winglet geometry on flow noise was evaluated by numerically simulating noise based on the predicted flow field. A prototype of the target fan model was built, and flow and noise experiments were conducted to evaluate the actual performance quantitatively.