Aero-acoustical Study of Axial Fan using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

• B. Sabralilou ¹
• A. Mohebbi ¹
• E. Akbarian ²
• A. Rezvanivand fanaei ¹

¹ Biosystems Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran

² Biosystems Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22067/jam.v10i2.74963

Abstract

Introduction
The issue of noise pollution is one of the concerns of most societies and industries because of their relationship to the environmental comfort of life or work of people are paying attention. The Aero-acoustics not only because of government regulations on the noise pollution, but also due to the increasing demand of the people's living standards and create a safe environment for farm animals is considered important. At the same time, products with high aero-acoustic performance will attract a lot of customers, which is in the interest of the global economy. Reducing current noise is often accompanied by a reduction in energy costs, resulting in durability of structures and improved product quality.
Materials and Methods
Sound measurements were carried out at the wind tunnel in Tabriz Tractor Engineers Company. Using the measurements performed by the instrument, the sound levels were measured at different periods of the fan. In many practical applications that include turbulent flow, no noise has any specific tone and the sound energy is continuously distributed over a wide range of frequencies. In cases where broadband noise is present, statistical disturbance values easily calculated from the RANS equations can be used in conjunction with semi-experimental correlations and audio coordination to reveal some broadband noise sources.
Based on the problem, the boundary condition is the type of "input velocity" for the input and "output pressure" for the output. It was also used to move the mesh to apply the rotary motion of the fan. The thermodynamic conditions at these boundaries should be considered.
Results and Discussion
The accuracy of the simulation results data was verified with the measured data. In the laboratory results, the audio level is accompanied by an audio environment and an inverter and a belt that is about 15 db. With this in mind, the simulation results had a good agreement with experimental results.
The velocity is a critical parameter in fan-related discussions. In the upper part of the fan, the speed of the air increases as the fan sucks, and this speed will increase as the fan approaches. In the second part, which includes the fan, for speeding objects, the speed will increase as the radius increases (due to the constant rotational speed), so the maximum speed will be at the tip of the blades. In the lower part of the fan, the speed will decrease as the fan impact decreases on the air molecules as well as the boundary layer behavior near the walls.
As the speed and intensity of the turbulence are higher at the tip of the blades, hence the kinetic energy of these regions must also be higher. The kinetic energy of the turbulence in these areas is the highest. At the bottom of the fan, it is also observed that the kinetic energy of the turbulence has been relatively high, due to the existence of flow vortices that emerge from the fan period and the presence of positive and negative pressure (negative pressure due to suction of the fan center). The high pressure difference on both sides of the fluid particles causes a rotating flow in the particles, which affects the adjacent particles and causes vortex formation.
Conclusion
The results showed that the numerical acoustic evaluation simulates the performance of the broadband band with good results and has good agreement with the effects of the current on the noise. Increasing the recognition of the factors and their effects on the fan noise level can help to reduce the noise effects of turbo-machines. Using numerical simulations in predicting and reducing noise, in addition to time saving, dramatically reduces costs by using direct methods and mechanical design physically. With regard to all aspects and calculations, it can be concluded that acoustic numerical simulation and broadband noise model have a good ability to analyze noise in fans and rotary machines.

Keywords

• Noise
• Radiator fan
• computational fluid dynamics
• broadband noise

20.1001.1.22286829.1399.10.2.11.9

Open Access

©2020 The author(s). This article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source.

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