Axial Fan Design: Modern Layout and Design Strategy for Fan Performance Optimization

In a world where the ever increasing demand on developing energy-efficient systems is probably the most stringent design constraint, the trend in engineering research in recent years has been to optimise the existing technologies rather than to implement new ones. In the field of turbomachinery, the rapid design of a blade that performs well and satisfies machining requirements is one of the goals in designing flow-machines and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is nowadays used as a common tool to predict the performance of such devices. The present work addresses the application of CFD in the research and development process of axial fans of the kind used in numerous fields of engineering and in daily life. In this sense, a modern layout and design strategy for axial impellers are presented, in which analytical designs are proposed as optimum solutions for their class and their performance is investigated by means of CFD. The method is essentially based on the correct theoretical treatment of the flow in axial fans and significant improvements in the efficiency of the proposed designs are achieved by employing it as an optimization tool.