The effect of splitter blades with different lenghts on the performance of double inlet radial fans

Effective parameters in increasing overall efficiency are impeller blade angles, blade width, impeller diameter and number of blades. For efficient use of energy, adding splitter blades to the impellers of fans can be considered as an alternative design. Splitter blades have an importance in succeding optimum design and determining the best efficiency working area. Splitter blades can generally be placed in the geometric middle of the blades, directed from the impeller inlet to the exit or from the impeller exit to the inlet optionally. The most important feature of intermediate blades is that flow separation is easy to control. Boundary layer separation occurs in the flow region where the layer, whose thickness increases in the flow direction, experiences static pressure loading due to the external flow. In this region, the boundary layer separates from the wall and moves away. Since the pressure in the steady flow region is greater than the frictional resistance, separation in the boundary layer causes the total flow resistance to increase. Since separation losses will decrease with intermediate blades, the loads on the wing surfaces will decrease. Therefore, the best solution to reduce the load per unit area on the wing is to create new surfaces in addition to the existing surfaces such as splitter blades's surfaces. Since the area covered by large flow rate fans is large, double inlet radial fans are designed to reach the same flow rate with a smaller area. Based on this, in this study, the effect of splitter blades of 3 different lengths added to the double-inlet radial fan wheel on the fan performance was investigated. Key Words: Double inlet radial fan, Impeller, Splitter blade, Number of blades, Blade length, Fan characteristics, CFD analysis