Performance Study of Centrifugal Fan of a Cooling Turbine by Numerical Simulation

In this study, the centrifugal fan of a cooling turbine is numerically investigated and is then compared with the experimental results at a performance point. The experimental performance characteristics of the fan are as: rotational speed and flow parameters at the inlet and outlet of the fan. In this cooling turbine, the fan is used for cooling of the turbine inlet air flow. The aims of this study are obtaining the fan performance characteristics curve and 3D numerical simulation inside the fan. Rotor and case modeling is respectively conducted using Blade Gen and Catia software, the grid generation of the rotor domain and fan casing is respectively accomplished by Turbo Grid and Ansys Mesh software and finally, 3D numerical solution of flow inside the fan is done by CFX software. In the CFX software, compressible flow equations are solved using pressure based method with SST turbulence modeling. To verify the numerical results, grid independency is investigated. Finally, the numerical results are compared with the experimental results that shows a good agreement.