Experimental Determination of the Effect of Number of Impeller Blades on the Air Flow Rate and Power Consumption of Centrifugal Blowers

Authors

  • Tito Mwinuka Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Dar es Salaam, P. O. Box 35131 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Keywords:

blower air flow rate, blower design parameters, blower power consumption, centrifugal blower, number of impeller blades.

Abstract

Design parameters for a centrifugal blower includes, power of a motor, impeller diameter, impeller width, impeller rotational speed, volume flow rate and number of blades in an impeller, while relationship among several of this parameters are well defined in literature, it is unclear as to how the number of impellers blades affect the performance of a blower. In this work, an experimental method to determine the effect of number of blades in an impeller is described. The blower has been tested at three different speeds using five fabricated impellers with 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 blades respectively. It is found that, for all 3 selected blower speeds, air flow rate increase by about 19% by increasing the number of impeller blades from 4 to 8. It is also found that increasing blower speed has a significant increase in flow rate; that is, more that 80% increase upon doubling the number of impeller blades. It is also found that there is slight variation in power consumption due to change in number of blades. It is therefore proposed that changing the number of impeller blades can only be applied to fine tune the blower design within 15-20% flow rate variation. However nominal flow rate has to be established using blower speed and dimensions. Power consumption if found to increase slightly with maximum variation of 3% on increasing blade number from 4 to 8. The results are useful in the design or re-design of fabricated blowers and selection of suitable speed. When space is a constraint, increase in the number of blades or blower speed can respectively be applied to increase air flow rate depending on the magnitude of the increase required.

References

[1] Vibhakar, N. N. and Channiwala, S. A. (2001) “Computer Aided Design of Radial Tipped Centrifugal Blowers and Fans.” 4th International Conference on Mechanical Engineering, Dhaka, Bangladesh pp. 55-60.
[2] Liu Houlin, Wang Yong, Yuan Shouqi, Tan Minggao and Wang Kai (2010). “Effects of Blade Number on Characteristics of Centrifugal Pump.” Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering vol. 23, pp 1-7.
[3] S. Chakraborty and K. Pandey (2011) “Numerical Studies on Effects of Blade Number Variations on Performance of a Centrifugal Pumps at 4000 rpm.” IACSIT International Journal of Engineering and Technology, vol. 3, no. 4 pp. 410-416.
[4] K. Pandey, A. Singh and S. Chakraborty (2012) “Numerical Studies on Effects of Blade Number variation on the Performance of Centrifugal Pumps at 2500 rpm.” Journal of Environmental Research Development, vol. 6 no. 3A, pp. 863-868.
[5] A. Amladimanesh, H. Ajam and H. Nezhad (2015) “Numerical Study of Blade number Effect on the Performance of 3D FC Centrifugal Fan.” International Journal of Mechatronics, Electrical and Computer Technology, vol. 5 (15), pp. 2109-2119.

Downloads

Published

2016-02-24

How to Cite

Mwinuka, T. (2016). Experimental Determination of the Effect of Number of Impeller Blades on the Air Flow Rate and Power Consumption of Centrifugal Blowers. American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences, 17(1), 81–88. Retrieved from https://asrjetsjournal.org/index.php/American_Scientific_Journal/article/view/1392

Issue

Section

Articles