Effect Of Inlet Ducts On Performance Of A Radial Blower

Associate Professor (Basharat@ ksu.edu.sa) Mechanical Engineering Department College Of Engineering King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.Centrifugal machines are widely used in all most all industries for variety of purposes ranging from manufacture of household items to the turbo pumps of space vehicles. This wide spectrum of use of these machines has given rise to spatial restriction in their working environment, which causes non-uniform flow at the entry of their rotors. This non-uniformity is called inlet distortion and it usually degrades the performance of these machines. This paper presents the results of an investigation carried out to experimentally determine the performance of a radial blower with three types of inlet ducts. Attempts has been made to use different methods for the evaluation of the inlet distortion caused by different shapes and the orientation of the inlet ducts and observe its degenerating effects on the performance of the radial blower. Performance in terms of stable operating ranges of the blower and impeller, and pressure rise coefficients for the blower, impeller and the volute, have been evaluated. It has been found that both the stable operating range and the pressure rise coefficient depend on inlet distortion. It has been found out that both these performance parameters decrease with the increase in the inlet distortion. Further it has been found out that both the shape and orientation cause different magnitudes of inlet distortion and hence decrease the performance parameters of the blower to different magnitudes.Corresponding Author: Dr. Basharat Salim, Mechanical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh. Email: basharat@ksu.edu.s