Optimization of a High Pressure Industrial Fan

Fans are used in industrial refineries, power generation, petrochemistry, pollution control, etc. These fans can perform in sometimes extreme, mission-critical conditions. The design of fans has historically relied on turbomachinery affinity laws, resulting in oversized machines that are expensive to manufacture and transport. With the increasingly lower CPU cost of fluid modeling, designers can now turn to CFD optimization to produce the necessary machine performance and flow conditions while respecting manufacturing constraints. The objective of this study is to maximize the pressure rise across an industrial fan while respecting manufacturing constraints. First, a 3D scan of the baseline impeller is used to create the CFD model and validated against experimental data. The baseline impeller geometry is then parameterized with 21 free parameters driving the shape of the hub, shroud, blade lean and camber. A fully automated optimization process is conducted using Numeca’s Fine™/Design3D software, allowing for a CPU-efficient Design Of Experiment (DOE) database generation and a surrogate model using the powerful Minamo optimization kernel and data-mining tool. The optimized impeller coupled with a CFD-aided redesigned volute showed an increase in overall pressure rise over the whole performance line, up to 24% at higher mass flow rates compared to the baseline geometry.