1983-Low-solidity Tandem-cascade Diffusers for Wide-flow-range Centrifugal Blowers
1983-Low-solidity Tandem-cascade Diffusers for Wide-flow-range Centrifugal Blowers
Yasutoshi Senoo
Hiroshi Hayami
Hironobu Ueki
Research Institute of Industrial Science.
Kyushu University, Kasugashi, Fukuoka, 816, JAPAN
ABSTRACT NOMENCLATURE
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I'll
Cascade
Fig.3 Geometry of test circular cascades A
a
U E B1 E3
The solidity of the rear blade row was 0.63. and
the blade row was identified as EO when stagger angle .••- Al
was 64 deg. Three kinds of tandem cascade of
BIEO, BIE3 and B E3 were tested where E3 means that the 05
stagger angle is 67 deg, or three deg larger than E0.
The circumferential position of the rear blade row rela- Vanel ess
tive to the front row was varied to achieve the maximum
pressure recovery. The geometry of the Al cascade and
the best arrangement of B1EO cascade are shown in Fig.3.
The exit of the diffuser was opened to the
atmosphere. The flow rate was adjusted by a valve at the
inlet of a long straight suction pipe and it was
measured with an orifice flow-meter in the pipe. The
0 1.0 1.5 R 2.0
suction pipe was followed by a plenum chamber and air (a) pQl2
was accelerated by a factor of 8.77 from the plenum
chamber to the intake of the blower.
The static and total pressure at the impeller exit 1.01 --
varied circumferentially due to the diffuser blades.
Therefore, the blower with a vaneless diffuser was
Cascade
n.
tested for various flow rates in advance, and the char- U A
acteristics of the impeller were estimated using the to-
tal pressure of main flow at 1.09r o and the wall static fF E B1E
-a—a
pressure at 1.1r o . It was assumed that the characteris-
tics of the impeller were not influenced by the dif- —_ - -i Al
fusers. In this assumption if the pressure loss of the 0.5
impeller is varied by changing the diffuser, the incre- „'• Vaneless
ment of pressure loss is attributed to the pressure loss
of the diffuser, providing that the input power to the
impeller is not modified by the diffuser blades. In the
present experiments, no measurement on the shaft power
was made. However, the above assumption was regarded re-
asonable since the mean value of the circumferentially
distributed wall static pressure at the impeller exit O v
1.0
was hardly changed by changing the diffusers. 1.5 R 20
(b) *=0,24
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
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Characteristics of Blower
Single Cascade Diffuser. The characteristic curves
of the blower with a single-row circular cascade dif-
fuser are presented in Fig.6. The ordinate is the pres-
sure coefficient. =2dP/PU 2 , and the abscissa is the
flow coefficient, m =G/2npbr 0 U. The mean flow angle at
the diffuser inlet, p , is also indicated on the ab- 0.5
W `A 3\` '
Wi A3'
2.0
80
(3 deg 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 2 0 \\
1.5 70
0.1 0.2 0 0.3
60 °
SO ° Fig.6 Characteristic curves of blowers with single
1.0 a° row cascade diffusers
° 30°
0.5 scissa. The full lines of '' and 4't in the figure are
respectively the static pressure coefficient and the to-
tal pressure coefficient measured at the impeller exit
for the blower with a vaneless diffuser, and the other
n V'-lines are the static pressure coefficient at the exit
0 1 2 3 of various kinds of diffuser.
t/l Open circles in Fig.6 are the experimental data for
the case of the vaneless diffuser, while the predicted
k = (dC L /da) C /(dC T /da) i characteristic curve is drawn as a full line. Agreement
is satisfactory. Furthermore, closed circles, open tri-
Fig.5 Cascade correction factor of flat plate linear angles and open squares are the experimental data for
cascade (5) the cases of Al, A3 and A3' cascades, while the pre-
dicted characteristic curves are shown as a dashed line,
a dotted line and a chain line respectively. Good agree-
1 The correction factor for a linear cascade of flat ment is observed in the small-flow-rate range, but the
plate shown in Fig.5 (5) was adopted for the correction predicted pressure coefficients are a little higher than
of the gradient of lift coefficient vs. attack angle, the experimental data in the large flow rate range.
and the zero-lift attack angle of a cascade,doc, was The discrepancy would be diminished if the zero-
evaluated from the zero-lift attack angle of an isolated lift attack angle is reduced by one deg. Alternatively,
airfoil, dot, as follows (6): the discrepancy may be attributed to the decrease of the
duc - dut = 15n.(Q/t) 2 [-(h/Q)cos2F+ O.425(s/e )sin26'1 deg effective passage width due to development of the side-
where e/t is the solidity. F is the stagger angle and h/Q wall boundary layer. That is, for the case of Fig.6, be-
and s/Q represent the camber ratio and the thickness tter agreement would be achieved by reducing the scale
ratio of the airfoil respectively. of abscissa considering a blockage factor of 0.05 for
the prediction.
2 In the analysis it is assumed that CL=0.10(t(+5.2) At the left end of the characteristic curve, the
for all values of d in deg. According to Fig.2, this system of the test blower was too unstable to take data,
equation over-estimates C L for C L >1.3 for the isolated and it was assumed as the critical flow rate for surge.
airfoil. The critical flow rate of the Al cascade is almost equal
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Note on the Correction Factor for Tandem Cascade Table 1 Performance of tandem cascades with differnt
Let a tandem cascade be made by cutting each blade of interference factors,
a flat plate cascade 70 deg in stagger angle and 0.98 in 1=70 deg, 6f=0.35, 6r=0.63.
solidity in two parts at the location of about 1/3 from
the leading edge. When the spacing between the two blade
rows is very narrow case 1, the overall performance of
the tandem cascade is not different from that of the
original cascade providing that the effect of boundary B iBs ae CL,(front) CL(rear)
layer is disregarded. On the other hand, if the spacing
Case 1 10 - 18.60 - 1.24
between the two blade rows is very wide case 2, the
Case 2 10 12.06 15.96 1.07 0.89
overall performance of the tandem cascade can be
Case 3 10 13.39 18.57 1.67 1.04
evaluated as simple sum of the performances of respec-
tive blade rows assuming that there is no interference
effect between the two blade rows. In a real tandem Case 1 18 - 19.83 - 0.20
Case 2 18 18.63 19.45 0.20 0.14
cascade, the spacing between the two blade rows is
Case 3 18 18.96 19.83 0.30 0.14
narrow and the performance must be intermediate between
the two extreme cases. The performances of these two ex-
treme cascades will be demonstrated using a potential
flow analysis. as is flow angle between two blade rows.
The zero-lift attack angle for a thin flat-plate
cascade is obviously zero, which is equal to that for an
isolated airfoil. On the other hand, according to Fig.5,
the cascade correction factor, K. on the lift/incidence necessary to incorporate the interference of the two
relation of a single airfoil dCL/dd. is 1.630 for the blade rows.
cascade with a solidity of 6 =0.98. while (1.O83 for the In order that the tandem cascade with two small-
cascade with 6 =0.35 and K=1.303 for the cascade with solidity blade rows in case 2 achieves as much turning
C=0.63. Using these values, the lift coefficient and the as the cascade of single row in case 1 does, it is
flow angle at the inlet and exit of respective blade necessary to multiply the respective cascade correction
rows are calculated for the cases that p1=10 and 18 deg, factor, K, by 1.65 as presented in case 3.
and the results are listed in case 1 and case 2 in Table In reality, as there is a little spacing between the
1. The example calculation indicates that the overall two blade rows, the turning angle become smaller as the
turning angle, p e - pt. is increased remarkably by locat- spacing is larger and it may be reasonable to assume 1.4
ing two blade rows close to each other, and modification as the interference factor for the present tandem
of the lift coefficient of blades in each blade row is cascade.
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