Experimental and numerical analysis of a crossflow fan

Abstract : An auto vehicle that can take off and land vertically is envisioned to solve current and future problems of road congestion by utilizing the enormous air space above this. Crossflow Fan has been looked into in the past to serve this purpose but not sufficient to justify its capability to provide enough vertical thrust with limited power and space. Hence more in depth study is required to further improve the thrust efficiency and thrust to power ratio to a point where this thrust producing method is viable. A 12-inch diameter, 1,5-inch span, 30-blade Cross Flow fan test apparatus was constructed and tested using an existing Turbine Test Rig (TTR) as a power source. Instrumentation was installed and a data acquisition program was developed to measure the performance of the Crossflow Fan. Performance measurement was taken over a speed range of 1,000 to 6,000 RPM. An experiment was conducted with the Crossflow Fan to determine among other things the stalling characteristics of the compressor. Performance and flow visualization results were then compared to predictions obtained from 2-D numerical simulation conducted using Flott, a commercial PC-based computational fluid dynamics software package by Softflo.