Axial-flow fan with advantages such as large air volume, high head pressure, and low noise is commonly used in the work of air-conditioner outdoor unit. In order to investigate the internal flow mechanism of the axial-flow fan with different trailing edge structures of impellers, four kinds of impellers were designed, and numerical simulation and experiment were deployed in this article. The pressure distribution on the blades surface and distribution of vorticity in impellers were obtained using numerical simulation. Distribution of blade loading and velocity at the circumference are discussed. The relationship between the wideband noise and the trailing edge was established based on the experiment results. The results show that after the optimization of the trailing edge structure, the distribution of vorticity near the trailing edge of the blade is more uniform, especially at the trailing edge of 80% of the chord length of the suction surface. From the blade height position of 70% to the impeller tip, the pressure on the surface rapidly increases due to the tip vortex and the vortex shedding on the blade edge occurred in the top region of impeller. The pressure fluctuation amplitude at the trailing edge structure of the tail-edge optimization structure is smaller. In the distribution of blade loading, the three tail-edge optimization structures have smaller pressure fluctuations and pressure differences at the trailing edge structure. It is extremely important to control the fluctuation amplitude at the trailing edge. The amplitude of low-frequency sound pressure level of optimizing the trailing edge structure decreases obviously in the range of 50–125 Hz, and the optimization structure of trailing edge has an obvious effect on low-frequency wideband noise.
Numerical simulation of the whole flow field of an axial-flow fan used in an air conditioner
