Junichiro Fukutomi

Effect of Blade Outlet Angle on Unsteady Hydrodynamic Force of Closed-Type Centrifugal Pump with Single Blade

Geometrically, the single-blade centrifugal impeller, commonly used today as a sewage pump, is not axially symmetric. For this reason, the static pressure around the impeller fluctuates greatly when the impeller is rotating, and not only the radial thrust but also the axial thrust shows large fluctuations. Therefore, it is extremely important for the improvement of pump reliability to quantitatively grasp these fluctuating hydrodynamic forces. In this study, we investigated the unsteady hydrodynamic forces in a closed-type centrifugal pump with a single blade for different blade outlet angles using a numerical analysis that takes into account both experiment and the leakage flow. The results clearly showed the effect of the blade outlet angle on that act on the impeller. The root-mean-square value of the fluctuating component of the total radial thrust was roughly the same for whichever impeller at low flow rate, but at high flow rates, the value increased for impellers with larger blade outlet angles. Moreover, when the leakage flow rate increased with increasing static pressure around the impeller, such that the rear and front shroud parts were subject to high pressure, the absolute value of the axial thrust on both these parts increased.

Quasi-Three-Dimensional Analysis of Cavitation in an Inducer

A method for the prediction of steady cavitation in turbopumps is proposed on the assumption that the fluid is inviscid and the stream surface is rotationally symmetric. The analysis in the meridian plane is combined with that in a blade-to-blade stream surface where a singularity method based on a closed cavity model is used. The present method is applied to a helical inducer

Study on Performance and Internal Flow Condition of Mini Turbo‐Pump

Mini turbo‐pumps which have a diameter smaller than 100mm are utilized in many fields; automobile radiator pump, artificial heart pump, cooling pump for electric devices, washing machine pump and so on. And the needs for the mini turbo‐pumps would become larger with the increase of the application of it for electrical machines. It is desirable that the mini turbo‐pump design is as simple as possible due to the limitation of the precision for manufacture. But the design method for the mini turbo‐pump is not established because the internal flow condition for these small‐sized fluid machineries is not clarified and conventional theory is not conductive for small‐sized pumps because of the low Reynolds number and the size effects. Therefore, we started the research of the mini turbo‐pump for the purpose of development of high performance mini turbo‐pump with simple structure. As a first step of this research, mini turbo‐pump with the 46mm rotor diameter was designed based on the conventional design method in...

Internal Flow Condition of High Power Contra-Rotating Small-Sized Axial Fan

Data centers have been built with spread of cloud computing. Further, electric power consumption of it is growing rapidly. High power cooling small-sized fans; high pressure and large flow rate small-sized fan, are used for servers in the data centers and there is a strong demand to increase power of it because of increase of quantity of heat from the servers. Contra-rotating rotors have been adopted for some of high power cooling fans to meet the demand for high power. There is a limitation of space for servers and geometrical restriction for cooling fans because spokes to support fan motors, electrical power cables and so on should be installed in the cooling fans. It is important to clarify complicated internal flow condition and influence of a geometric shape of the cooling fans on performance to achieve high performance of the cooling fans. In the present paper, the performance and the flow condition of the high power contra-rotating small-sized axial fan with a 40mm square casing are shown by experimental and numerical results. Furthermore, influence of the geometrical shape of the small-sized cooling fan on the internal flow condition is clarified and design guideline to improve the performance is discussed.

Influence of Blade Row Distance on Performance and Flow Condition of Contra-Rotating Small-Sized Axial Fan

Small-sized axial fans are used as air coolers for electric equipment. There is a strong demand for higher power of fans according to the increase of quantity of heat from electric devices. Therefore, higher rotational speed design is conducted, although, it causes the deterioration of the efficiency and the increase of noise. Then, the adoption of contra-rotating rotors for small-sized fans is proposed for the improvement of the performance. In the case of contra-rotating rotors, blade row distance between the front and the rear rotors influences on the performance and the noise. Therefore, it is important to clarify the optimum blade row distance between front and rear rotors. The performance curves of the contra-rotating small-sized axial fan under the condition of different blade row distances are shown and the blade row interaction between the front and the rear rotors are discussed by the numerical results. Furthermore, the optimum blade row distance of the contra-rotating small-sized axial fan is considered.

Influence of Blade Outlet Angle and Blade Thickness on Performance and Internal Flow Conditions of Mini Centrifugal Pump

Mini centrifugal pumps having a diameter smaller than 100mm are employed in many fields; automobile radiator pump, ventricular assist pump, cooling pump for electric devices and so on. Further, the needs for mini centrifugal pumps would become larger with the increase of the application of it for electrical machines. It is desirable that the mini centrifugal pump design be as simple as possible as precise manufacturing is required. But the design method for the mini centrifugal pump is not established because the internal flow condition for these small-sized fluid machines is not clarified and conventional theory is not suitable for small-sized pumps. Therefore, we started research on the mini centrifugal pump for the purpose of development of high performance mini centrifugal pumps with simple structure. Three types of rotors with different outlet angles are prepared for an experiment. The performance tests are conducted with these rotors in order to investigate the effect of the outlet angle on performance and internal flow condition of mini centrifugal pumps. In addition to that, the blade thickness is changed because blockage effect in the mini centrifugal pump becomes relatively larger than that of conventional pumps. On the other hand, a three dimensional steady numerical flow analysis is conducted with the commercial code (ANSYS-Fluent) to investigate the internal flow condition. It is clarified from the experimental results that head of the mini centrifugal pump increases according to the increase of the blade outlet angle and the decrease of the blade thickness. In the present paper, the performance of the mini centrifugal pump is shown and the internal flow condition is clarified with the results of the experiment and the numerical flow analysis. Furthermore, the effects of the blade outlet angle and the blade thickness on the performance are investigated and the internal flow of each type of rotor is clarified by the numerical analysis results.

Structure of a Turbulence Wedge Developed from a Single Roughness Element on a Flat Plate

A turbulence wedge which develops downstream from a single roughness element placed in a laminar boundary layer on a flat plate is experimentally investigated. Mean and fluctuating velocities and the intermittency factor were measured. Contours of the wedge and its development in the normal and spanwise directions were clarified by drawing intermittency contour lines. The mean properties inside of the wedge just behind the roughness did not reach fully developed turbulence, and they gradually developed in the downstream direction. The contour of the wedge is not formed by straight lines very near or far from the roughness, and the extent of the wedge in which the lines are straight is limited. Just behind the roughness, distributions of the mean and fluctuating velocities are complicatedly distorted, so the existence of several vortices is presumed. The intermittency contour Lines in the section normal to the flow are also presented.

Effect of blade outlet angle on radial thrust of single-blade centrifugal pump

Single-blade centrifugal pumps are widely used as sewage pumps. However, a large radial thrust acts on a single blade during pump operation because of the geometrical axial asymmetry of the impeller. This radial thrust causes vibrations of the pump shaft, reducing the service life of bearings and shaft seal devices. Therefore, to ensure pump reliability, it is necessary to quantitatively understand the radial thrust and clarify the behavior and generation mechanism. This study investigated the radial thrust acting on two kinds of single-blade centrifugal impellers having different blade outlet angles by experiments and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. Furthermore, the radial thrust was modeled by a combination of three components, inertia, momentum, and pressure, by applying an unsteady conservation of momentum to this impeller. As a result, the effects of the blade outlet angle on both the radial thrust and the modeled components were clarified. The total head of the impeller with a blade outlet angle of 16 degrees increases more than the impeller with a blade outlet angle of 8 degrees at a large flow rate. In this case, since the static pressure of the circumference of the impeller increases uniformly, the time-averaged value of the radial thrust of both impellers does not change at every flow rate. On the other hand, since the impeller blade loading becomes large, the fluctuation component of the radial thrust of the impeller with the blade outlet angle of 16 degrees increases. If the blade outlet angle increases, the fluctuation component of the inertia component will increase, but the time-averaged value of the inertia component is located near the origin despite changes in the flow rate. The fluctuation component of the momentum component becomes large at all flow rates. Furthermore, although the time-averaged value of the pressure component is almost constant, the fluctuation component of the pressure component becomes large at a large flow rate. In addition to the increase of the fluctuation component of this pressure component, because the fluctuation component of the inertia and momentum components becomes large (as mentioned above), the radial thrust increases at a large flow rate, as is the case for the impeller with a large blade outlet angle.

Performance and Flow Condition of Contra-rotating Small-sized Axial Fan at Partial Flow Rate

Small-sized axial fans are used as air cooler for electric equipments. But there is a strong demand for higher power of fans according to the increase of quantity of heat from electric devices. Therefore, higher rotational speed design is conducted, although, it causes the deterioration of efficiency and the increase of noise. Then the adoption of contrarotating rotors for the small-sized axial fan is proposed for the improvement of performance. In the present paper, the performance curves of the contra-rotating small-sized axial fan with 100mm diameter are shown and the velocity distributions at a partial flow rate at the inlet and the outlet of each front and rear rotor are clarified with experimental results. Furthermore, the flow conditions between front and rear rotors of the contra-rotating small-sized axial fan are investigated by numerical analysis results and causes of the performance deterioration of the contra-rotating small-sized axial fan at the partial flow rate is discussed.

Performance and Internal Flow of Contra-Rotating Small Hydro Turbine

Small hydropower generation is one of important alternative energy, and potential of small hydropower is great. Efficiency of small hydro turbines is lower than that of large one, and these small hydro turbine’s common problems are out of operation by foreign materials. Then, there are demands for small hydro turbines to keep high performance and wide flow passage. Therefore, we adopted contra-rotating rotors, which can be expected to achieve high performance and enable to use low-solidity rotors with wide flow passage, in order to accomplish high performance and stable operation. Final goal of this study is development of a small hydro turbine like electrical goods, which has high portability and makes an effective use of unused small hydro power energy source. In this research, experimental apparatus of the contra-rotating small hydro turbine with 60mm casing diameter was manufactured and performance of it was investigated by an experiment. Efficiency of the contra-rotating small hydro turbine was high in pico-hydro turbine and high efficiency could be kept in wide flow rate range. Internal flow condition, which was difficult to measure experimentally, was shown by the numerical flow analysis. Further, influence of spokes to support the rotor was clarified. Then, a relation between the performance and internal flow condition was considered by the experimental and numerical analysis results.Copyright