The aim of this work is to investigate how a reduction of the noise emissions can be achieved by means of an irregular arrangement of the blades of the fan impeller and an additional blade skewing.
For this purpose a fan impeller with a defined operating point is designed. Preliminary investigations have shown that a volumetric flow rate of 18 m3/h at a pressure of 200 Pa is required for cooling. Due to structural restrictions, only one axial impeller with a diameter of 68 mm can be used. The rotational speed of the electric motor is 10000 rpm. In a further step, the influences of the blade skewing and irregular arrangement of the blades are examined. These impellers are manufactured in a rapid prototyping process, which is a cost-effective and fast process. Thus, various variants can be examined to find the most suitable impeller. The study of the impellers is divided into two phases. Firstly, the fluid mechanical data of the impeller is measured. For this purpose, a chamber test stand is used to measure the characteristic curves of fan impellers. Thus, on the one hand, it can be examined whether the designed impeller reaches the operating point and, on the other hand, the influence of the noise reduction measures on the characteristic curves can also be evaluated. It is, of course, not desired that the noise reduction measures result in a deterioration of the pressure increase or in the volumetric flow rate. In the second phase, the noise generation of the impeller is measured in an installed state on an acoustic test stand. For this purpose, the impellers are installed in the electric motor and then acoustically examined in enveloping surface method according to DIN 45635.
It can be seen that the sound load can be reduced by 5.6 dB by a sufficient design of the impeller compared to a reference impeller. The further measures taken, such as the irregular arrangement of the blades and the blade skewing, have shown a further improvement of 1.6 dB. The influence of the implemented measures on the characteristic curve lies in a small area. It is measured that the pressure increase has fallen due to the irregular arrangement of the blades and the blade skewing by 10 Pa with a constant remaining flow rate.
Temperature considerations in electric motor noise reduction
