The Closed Cycle of Designing an Industrial Axial Fan Using Modern Engineering Software Tools

The paper provides a brief tutorial for designing an industrial axial fan installation using modern engineering software, discusses tips and tricks at each stage of the designing process and proposes a number of new approaches which improve calculation accuracy, modelling adequacy, fan manufacturability and operability. The methodology consists of plane airfoil profiling, further arrangement of plane sections for forming a volumetric airfoil, computational fluid dynamics calculations, as well as structural strength evaluation. The plane section calculations provide the general insights of the future blade shape on the basis of the recognized approaches. The blade formation technique allows to design a fan blade of any shape with a single series of previously calculated plane sections. Applying the finite-element method to the modelling of the fan impeller solid mechanics ensures its strength and reliability. The connected fluid-structure interaction model allows taking into account all the effects of fluid and solid nature. All these measures form a unique closed cycle of designing an industrial fan installation which can be used by engineers and scientists who apply computer aided design and engineering tools for the creation of axial fans and compressors.