Numerical Investigation of Pressure Fluctuation on the Volute of a Backward Curved Blade Centrifugal Fan

The pressure fluctuations on the volute surface induced by internal unsteady flow are the important sources of fan casing vibration and noise generation. In this paper, a three-dimensional and unsteady flow of a whole impeller-volute structure have been carried out by using commercial CFX code in order to obtain the wall pressure fluctuations on the volute of a large scale centrifugal fan (especially in the vicinity of volute tongue). The two important different flow rates have been simulated, the best efficiency point (BEP) and 130 percent of the BEP (1.3 × BEP), multi-domain structure grids have been applied in all the domains of current simulations. The pressure fluctuations of setting locations on the volute have been obtained by this method. Characteristics of these fluctuations in time and frequency domains were mainly analyzed. The results showed that the amplitudes of these pressure fluctuations over the volute changed with the flow rates variation. The blade passing frequency and their second harmonic frequency were observed clearly, and an important peak presented at the blade passing frequency (BPF). The amplitude of BPF has related with the position of the volute. On the circumferential direction of the volute, the highest values appeared in the vicinity of volute tongue; on the axial position, the peak value was discovered near to impeller shrouds. All the calculation results have been compared to the experimental results showing a good agreement.