Design and Experimental Validation of a Ducted Counter-rotating Axial-flow Fans System

Hussain Nouri (1) , Florent Ravelet (1) , Farid Bakir (1) , Christophe Sarraf (1) , Robert Rey (1)

1 DynFluid - Laboratoire de Dynamique des Fluides

An experimental study on the design of counter-rotating axial-flow fans was carried out. The fans were designed using an inverse method. In particular, the system is designed to have a pure axial discharge flow. The counter-rotating fans operate in a ducted-flow configuration and the overall performances are measured in a normalized test bench. The rotation rate of each fan is independently controlled. The relative axial spacing between fans can vary from 17% to 310%. The results show that the efficiency is strongly increased compared to a conventional rotor or to a rotor-stator stage. The effects of varying the rotation rates ratio on the overall performances are studied and show that the system has a very flexible use, with a large patch of high efficient operating points in the parameter space. The increase of axial spacing causes only a small decrease of the efficiency

Mots clés: counterrotating; axial fan; turbomachinery

Domaines: Dynamique des Fluides [physics.flu-dyn]

Hussain Nouri, Florent Ravelet, Farid Bakir, Christophe Sarraf, Robert Rey. Design and Experimental Validation of a Ducted Counter-rotating Axial-flow Fans System. Journal of Fluids Engineering, 2012, 134, pp.104504. ⟨10.1115/1.4007591⟩. ⟨hal-00705797v2⟩