AUTHORS: Ishan Varma, Ranjith Maniyeri

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ABSTRACT: Analysis of fluid flow in a centrifugal blower is essential to understand the flow pattern which helps to explore its detailed performance for the better design. The objective of the present study is to estimate the performance characteristics and the flow field in the centrifugal blower under variable inlet parameters by numerical analysis. In this paper numerical simulations are carried out on a standard finite volume open source code using Moving Reference Frame (MRF) methodology. Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flow is solved with standard eddy-viscosity k-epsilon model to study the aerodynamic properties of the blower. The model is created in a standard CAD software and is imported to the mesh generation software for Geometry Clean-Up and for the generation of Unstructured Mesh: Triangle type (surface mesh) and hybrid mesh consisting of Tetra and Prism layers (Volume mesh).Solving and post processing is done thereafter wherein static pressure rise, velocity, volume coefficient and head coefficient of the centrifugal blower are determined under different variable inlet parameters like volume flow rate, rotational speed, inlet velocity and the stream lines are observed which are critical to the design

KEYWORDS: Centrifugal Blower, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Navier-Stokes Equations, Moving ReferenceFrame, k-epsilon Turbulence Model

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