Numerical Verification of the Thermodynamic Determination of the Hydraulic Efficiency of Radial Fans

For fans without cooling it is possible to determine the hydraulic efficiency measuring the pressure and the temperature rise through the fan. The shaft work can be determined according applying the first law of thermodynamics for an open system. Without any losses the change of state would be isotropic and the work done equal to the specific heat at constant pressure of the fluid times the isentropic temperature rise in the impeller. Due to the losses, however, the real temperature at the exit of the impeller will be higher than the isentropic temperature since the real process is polytropic. The isentropic temperature at the exit of the impeller can be computed by the isentropic relations with the inlet temperature and the pressure rise. The hydraulic efficiency can be computed as the ratio of the isentropic temperature rise divided by the real temperature rise. In order to verify this thermodynamic approach for the determination of the hydraulic efficiency CFD simulations of a radial fan were performed. In the CFD simulation the hydraulic power, the shaft power, the pressure rise and the temperature rise can be read out and computed directly. In such a way the hydraulic efficiency computed by the ratio of the hydraulic power by the shaft power can be compared by the thermodynamically computed efficiency. In this work this comparison has been performed and the results and the precision of the thermodynamically predicted efficiency are presented and discussed in detail.