Title: Low Speed Control Vortex Axial Fan Design for Minimum Noise
Speaker: Mark Hurtado, PhD Candidate, Virginia Tech
Date: Monday, November 26, 2018
Time: 10:00am -11:00am
Location: NIA, Room 137
Abstract: Axial flow fans are critical in maintaining a safe work environment by effectively circulating air in occupied areas. However, commercial ventilation fans are often loud and cause noise induced hearing loss from prolonged exposure. Consequently, there is an increasing need for quiet ventilation fans. Since fan noise scales with the 5-6th power of the fan tip speed, lowering the fan tip speed is an effective approach to reduce noise. To this end, the present work implements a control vortex design (CVD) methodology to design the fan blade profile to minimize the fan tip speed and noise while preserving aerodynamic performance. The CVD fan blades are characterized by a span wise changing circulation that ensures a higher flow rate contribution of the blade outer sections, i.e. axial flow increases from the blade hub to the tip. However, a non-uniform span wise circulation is susceptible to radially outward flow that increases near tip losses if the flow is not in radial equilibrium. Consequently, in this study the induced velocities were designed to maintain radial equilibrium. The fan blade sections giving the desired velocity profile constitute the final fan blade design. The fan design has been integrated with an inlet section designed to maximize the fan aerodynamic performance. The fan and inlet section have been fabricated using rapid prototyping and tested showing good agreement with predictions.
Bio: Mark Hurtado is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech working under the supervision of Dr. Ricardo Burdisso. Currently, he holds the position of Graduate Research Assistant at the Vibration and Acoustics Laboratories (VAL). His research is focused on the design of low speed ventilation fans for minimum noise. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Western Michigan University in 2015.
In the summer of 2018, Mark worked as an Aerospace engineer intern at Corvid Technologies. He concentrated on developing computer codes to automate the post-processing of Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results using ParaView. Furthermore, he validated RANS turbulence models using the DrivAer model and NACA 0012 airfoil geometries.
Mark has a broad experience in the design, testing, and validation of axial fans as well as implementing numerical tools to analyze fan aerodynamics and aeroacoustics. He has conducted numerous experiments in the anechoic chamber as well as outdoors to measure radiated noise using a far field arc array and phased array. He has published his work in 4 different conferences earning a Best Student Paper Award at the INTER-NOISE conference in 2018.