Aerodynamic and acoustic analysis of an industrial fan

The efforts to predict noise radiation for an industrial fan using direct computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is presented in this paper. Industry has been using CFD tool to guide fan design in terms of efficiency prediction and improvement. However, the use of CFD tool for aero-dynamic noise prediction is very limited in the past, partly due to the fact that research in aero-acoustics field was not practical for industry application. With the most recent technologies in CFD field and increasing computational power, the industry application of aero-acoustics becomes much more promising. It is demonstrated here that fan tonal noise and broadband noise at low frequencies can be directly predicted using an Overset grid system and high order finite difference schemes with acceptable fidelity.