NUMERICAL PREDICTION OF THE OPTIMAL STAGGER ANGLES FOR A HIGH-POWER TURBO BLOWER

The turbo blowers having large power capacity are generally composed of the variable inlet guide vane, the impeller and the variable diffuser. In the present study, the effect of the stagger angles on the aerodynamic performances has been investigated by CFD methods. The design specifications of the reference model having 400kW power were given as 7.43kg/s of mass flow rate, 1.66 of pressure ratio with 12000rpm of impeller rotating speed. As the first simulation parameter, the diffuser vane angle was varied in the range of ±20 degree from the initial-design point. The inlet guide vane angles, as the second one, was changed in the range of ±40 degree from the initial-design point. The commercial Navier-Stokes solver, ANSYS-CFX, was applied to solve the three-dimensional unsteady flow fields inside the turbo blower. Through the numerical results, the desirable setting angles were proposed to fit the best performance to the variation of the operating conditions.