Shape Optimization of

Forward-Curved-Blade
Centrifugal Fan with
Kwang-Yong Kim1
Professor
Navier-Stokes Analysis
e-mail: kykim@inha.ac.kr
In this paper, the response surface method using a three-dimensional Navier-Stokes analy-
sis to optimize the shape of a forward-curved-blade centrifugal fan is described. For the
Seoung-Jin Seo numerical analysis, Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with the standard k- ⑀
Graduate Student
turbulence model are discretized with finite volume approximations. The SIMPLEC algo-
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
rithm is used as a velocity–pressure correction procedure. In order to reduce the huge
Inha University,
computing time due to a large number of blades in forward-curved-blade centrifugal fan,
Incheon 402-751, Republic of Korea
the flow inside of the fan is regarded as steady flow by introducing the impeller force
models. Four design variables, i.e., location of cutoff, radius of cutoff, expansion angle of
scroll, and width of impeller, were selected to optimize the shapes of scroll and blades.
Data points for response evaluations were selected by D-optimal design, and a linear
programming method was used for the optimization on the response surface. As a main
result of the optimization, the efficiency was successfully improved. Effects of the relative
size of the inactive zone at the exit of impeller and momentum fluxes of the flow in scroll
on efficiency were further discussed. It was found that the optimization process provides a
reliable design of this kind of fan with reasonable computing time.
关DOI: 10.1115/1.1792256兴

1 Introduction analysis as a tool for design of turbomachinery. As a technique of

Forward-curved-blade centrifugal fans have been widely used
in air-conditioning devices due to relatively high flow rates, low
noise, and high efficiency. These centrifugal fans have several
main features that distinguish them from the other types of cen-
trifugal fans: a larger diameter ratio of impeller, larger relative
width of impeller, and larger number of forward-curved blades.
In order to design a fan of high performance, it is necessary to
obtain detailed information about flow field of the fan. Some ex-
perimental studies on the flow inside of forward-curved-blade fan
were carried out with five-hole probe 关1,2兴 and spark tracing
method 关3兴. The results commonly show that the separation zone
is formed at the front of the impeller. In the scroll, strong three-
dimensional flows were also observed.
Recent development of computational fluid dynamics for three-
dimensional viscous flow fields provides efficient tools for analy-
sis and design. Flow analysis techniques using Reynolds-averaged
Navier-Stokes equations 共RANS兲 have made remarkable progress
in the applications to turbomachinery. As for forward-curved-
blade centrifugal fans, Guo and Kim 关4兴 performed both steady
and unsteady three-dimensional RANS analysis for a forward-
curved-blade centrifugal fan, and found that, except in the vicinity
of the volute tongue, the steady results with frozen rotor condition
are in good agreements with unsteady results. In order to reduce
the huge computing time for RANS analysis of this flow, Seo,
Kim, and Kang 关5兴 developed simplified models of impeller
forces, and a steady calculation with the models gave the results
for velocity components, static pressure, and flow angles at the
exit of the impeller in good agreement with experimental data at
relatively high flow coefficients.
The recent enhancement of the computing environment has
made numerical optimizations using three-dimensional RANS
1
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Contributed by the Fluids Engineering Division for publication in the JOURNAL
OF FLUIDS ENGINEERING. Manuscript received by the Fluids Engineering Division
October 27, 2003; revised manuscript received April 4, 2004. Associate Editor:
Yoshinobu Tsujimoto.
aerodynamic numerical optimization, gradient-based optimization
methods have been most widely used in design optimizations 关6兴.
However, the largest disadvantage of these methods is the possi-
bility to fall into a local minimum with nonsmooth and noisy
objectives and constraints. The adjoint variable method 关7兴, devel-
oped recently, is regarded as one of most efficient gradient-based
methods, but needs significant reprogramming in the analysis rou-
tine. On the other hand, the response surface method 关8兴, as a
global optimization method, has many advantages over the
gradient-based methods. Local sensitivity analysis is not required.
The information is collected from various sources and by different
tools. Multiple criteria as well as multiple design point optimiza-
tions can be handled. Parallel computations can be easily per-
formed. And, it smooths out the high-frequency noise of the ob-
jective function and is thus expected to find a solution near the
global optimum. Recently, with these advantages, the response
surface methods have been applied to many single- and multidis-
ciplinery optimization problems 关9,10兴.
Ahn and Kim 关11兴 applied the response surface method based
on three-dimensional thin-layer Navier-Stokes analysis to the de-
sign of blade section of axial compressor rotor. In this work, the
optimum stacking line was found to design a custom-tailored
three-dimensional blade for maximum efficiency with other pa-
rameters fixed. And a gradient-based optimization method was
presented by Lee and Kim 关6兴 to find an optimum shape of a stator
blade in an axial compressor through calculations of single-stage
rotor-stator flow. For forward-curved-blade centrifugal fans, Han,
Maeng, and Yoo 关12兴 studied the characteristics of the inactive
zone, and optimized the shape of cutoff by using a two-
dimensional RANS analysis and response surface method. How-
ever, due to the strong three-dimensional structure of the flow in
the scroll, the validity of the two-dimensional analysis is still in
doubt.
In this study, the response surface method using three-
dimensional Navier-Stokes analysis was applied to the aerody-
namic design of a forward-curved-blade centrifugal fan to maxi-

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Fig. 1 Geometry of a forward-curved-blade centrifugal fan
mize the flow efficiency. To reduce computing time for RANS
analysis of the complicated three-dimensional unsteady flow in
this fan, a steady approximation using the simplified mathematical
model of impeller forces 关5兴 was employed. Four design variables,
i.e., location of cutoff, radius of cutoff, expansion angle of scroll,
and width of impeller, were selected as design variables to opti-
mize the shapes of scroll and blades.
2 Flow Analysis
For steady incompressible turbulent flows, the continuity and
Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations are as follows:
⳵
共 ␳ u i 兲 ⫽0,
(1)
⳵xi
冋冉 冊 册
⳵ ⳵p ⳵ ⳵ui ⳵u j 2 ⳵uk
共 ␳ u i u j 兲 ⫽⫺ ⫹ ␮ ⫹ ⫺ ␦ ⫺ ␳ u i⬘ u ⬘j
⳵x j ⳵xi ⳵x j ⳵x j ⳵xi 3 ⳵xk ij
⫹s̄ iu , (2)
where u i and u i⬘ are mean and fluctuating velocities, respectively,
and s̄ iu is source term. Governing equations with standard k⫺ ⑀
turbulence model 关13兴 are transformed to non-orthogonal curvilin-
ear coordinates, and are discretized with finite volume approxima-
tions. As a numerical scheme for the convection terms, a linear
upwind differencing scheme is used, and for the diffusion terms, a
central differencing scheme is used. The strongly implicit proce-
dure 共SIP兲 关14兴 was used to solve linear algebraic equations. Also
the SIMPLEC algorithm is used to match pressure and velocities.
Various boundary conditions have to be imposed for calcula-
tions of the forward-curved-blade centrifugal fan shown in Fig. 1.
In this work, since no experimental data are available for inlet
velocities and turbulent quantities, uniform profiles are assumed at
the inlet. At the exit boundary of each block, Neumann conditions
are used. A no-slip condition is adopted at the solid walls. Also,
the implementation of wall boundary conditions in turbulent flows
is completed by use of the empirical wall function to calculate the
mean velocity, turbulent kinetic energy, and dissipation rate in the
logarithmic wall layer.
In the presented work, a multiblock system is employed for the
grids. The whole computational domain is divided into three
blocks: core, impeller, and scroll. The grid points along the adja-
cent block boundaries are coincident with each other, and there-
fore a simple overlapping coupling procedure can be applied to
facilitate the transfer of aerodynamic information between blocks.
In case of a multiblock system, pressure gradient affects the trans-
port of momentum at the interface between different blocks.
Therefore, the pressure gradients as well as the pressures must be
joined between different blocks.
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Fig. 2 Grid system of the impeller block, diagram of forces
acting on the cell, and velocity triangles
Flow through the impeller experiences forces by moving
blades, which change the direction and the angular momentum of
the flow. Therefore, in the numerical calculation, the action of the
moving blade, i.e., the ‘‘blade force,’’ can be simulated by a body
force introduced to the computational cells in the impeller block.
With this concept, the impeller force models proposed in Ref. 关5兴
are used in this work to reduce the computing time. In these
models, circumferential and radial forces ( f c and f r , respectively兲
in the impeller block, shown in Fig. 2, are derived as functions of
flow rate and flow conditions at inlet and exit of the impeller, as
follows:
f c ⫽ṁ 关 d 2 共 d 2 ␻ /2⫺c 2r cot ␤ 2 兲 ␧⫺d 1 c 1u 兴 /d̄, (3)
f r ⫽ 21 Ā ␳ 兵 c 2u 关共 1⫹ ␩ im兲 u 2 ⫺c 2u 兴 ⫺c 1u 关共 1⫹ ␩ im兲 u 1 ⫺c 1u 兴 其
⌬V ␳ 2
兺
⫺ c u, (4)
r
where ṁ, d, ␻, ␤, ␧, ␳, Ā, c, u, r, ⌬V, and ␩ im are the mass flow
rate, diameter of impeller, angular velocity, blade angle, slip fac-
tor, density, average flow area, flow velocity, blade speed, radial
coordinate, volume of cell, and efficiency of impeller, respec-
tively, and subscripts 1 and 2 indicate the inlet and outlet of the
blade, respectively. As shown in Fig. 2, the impeller block consists
of a number of computational cells. The body forces f c and f r in
the above equations are calculated with the local velocities at inlet
and outlet of blade: c 1u , c 1r , c 2u , and c 2r . Thus, the body forces
are functions of both axial and circumferential coordinates. Then,
in the radial direction, the forces at specified axial and circumfer-
ential locations are distributed as proportional to the cell volume,
and stored in the source terms of discretized momentum equations
for each computational cell in the impeller block. Therefore,
physical information concerning the blade forces included in the
cell is not uniform in the block and changes with iteration step.
Thus, the nonaxisymmetric three-dimensional flow field in the
impeller block can be calculated with these impeller models.
To stabilize the solutions, each component of the force is cal-
culated by blending the local force ( f local) with the averaged force
( f av) with a weighting factor 共w兲, as follows:
f c ⫽w c f av
c ⫹ 共 1⫺w c 兲 f c
local
, (5)
f r ⫽w r f rav⫹ 共 1⫺w r 兲 f rlocal . (6)
av
The average force, f indicates the force averaged in circumfer-
ential direction and is calculated with the average velocities: c 1u
and c 1r at the inlet of impeller, and c 2u and c 2r at the outlet of
impeller, which are obtained from the flow coefficient ␾ and the
velocity diagram. In the above models of impeller force, the slip
factor and the efficiency must be prescribed. In this work, these
values are obtained from the experimental results provided by
Kim and Kang 关2兴.
Transactions of the ASME
 Table 1 Geometric data for the forward-curved-blade centrifugal fan „reference shape…

Impeller Blade Scroll

d2 160 mm ␤1 87.0° ␣ 4.7°
d 1 /d 2 0.80 ␤2 151.3° r 3 ⫽r 2 e ␪ tan ␣
b 100 mm Shape Circular arc ␪c 77°
Number of 36 Thickness 1.2 mm Rc 5 mm
blades

3 Numerical Optimization P t,ex⫺ P t,in

3.1 Response Surface Method. Optimization using the re-
sponse surface method 共RSM兲 关8兴 is a series of statistical and
mathematical techniques, which is useful for optimization pro-
cesses: generation of data by numerical computations or experi-
ments, construction of response surface by interpolating the data,
and optimization of the objective function on the surface. Al-
though the RSM was devised to obtain empirical correlation from
the experimental data, the ability to reduce the number of experi-
ments let this method be applied widely to the optimization prob-
lems 关15兴.
The polynomial-based response surfaces are commonly em-
ployed in RSM. Unknown coefficients of the polynomial are ob-
tained from a regression process. The response model is usually
assumed as a second-order polynomial, which can be written as
follows:
n n
␩⫽ , (9)
␳ 共 u 2 c 2u ⫺u 1 c 1u 兲
where P t is total pressure, and the subscripts, in and ex indicate
the inlet and exit of the fan, respectively.
Figure 1 shows the design variables for impeller and scroll:
location of the cutoff ( ␪ c ), radius of the cutoff (R c ), and width of
the impeller 共b兲. Another design variable is the expansion angle of
scroll 共␣兲 shown in Table 1.
4 Results and Discussions
A sectional view of the fan is shown in Fig. 1, and geometric
data of the reference fan are summarized in Table 1. The compu-
tational grid system used for the present calculations is shown in
Fig. 3. The numbers of grids in computational blocks are 30⫻18
⫻18, 6⫻66⫻20, and 96⫻12⫻20 at the core, impeller, and scroll,
respectively. The working fluid is 20°C air of 1.22 kg/m3 density
and 1.8⫻10⫺5 N s/m2 viscosity. The rotational speed of the im-

F⫽ ␤ 0 ⫹ 兺 ␤ x ⫹兺 ␤
j⫽1
j j
j⫽1
j jx j ⫹
2
兺兺␤
i⫽ j
i jx ix j , (7) peller is 1140 rpm, and the mass flow rate is 7.66 m3 /min. The
CPU time to obtain the converged solution for single-flow analy-
where n is the number of design variables, and the number of sis is about 2 h with a 2-GHz Pentium-IV processor.
regression coefficients ( ␤ o , ␤ l , etc.兲 is n t ⫽(n⫹1)(n⫹2)/2. To The results with the impeller force models 关Eqs. 共3兲 and 共4兲兴
determine the coefficients, standard least-squares regression can were validated in comparison with the measurements of Kim and
be used. In this case, the number of data must be larger than the Kang 关2兴 in the previous work 关5兴. For example, in Fig. 4, axial
number of coefficients. distributions of radial velocity component at the exit of impeller
In order to reduce the number of data needed for constructing 共␪⫽270°兲 for three different flow coefficients, are compared with
response surface and to improve the representation of the design the measurements 关2兴. In case of higher flow rates, ␾⫽2.4 and 4.0,
space, the design of experiment 共DOE兲 is important for selecting negative velocities occur near the front plate. Except in this region
design points. Among the different types of DOE techniques, of reverse flow, the computational profile for ␾⫽4.0 shows rea-
D-optimal design 关16兴 is employed in this work for the represen- sonably good agreement with experiment, while for the lower
tation of design space. With the number of design points only flow coefficients the magnitudes of this velocity component are
1.5–2.5 times the number of coefficients in the response model, slightly overpredicted. In this work, the clearance between impel-
reliable results can be obtained 关17兴. Guinta 关18兴 showed that this ler and casing is not considered in the analyses, and thus the
technique constructs the response surface with sufficient reliabil- leakage flow through the clearance and associated losses are ig-
ity in case with five design variables. nored. Therefore, the computational errors are partly attributed to
To estimate the significance of any individual in the quadratic
polynomial coefficient, analysis of variance 共ANOVA兲 and regres-
sion analysis yield a measure of the uncertainty in the coefficients
to increase the efficiency of the response surface. This uncertainty
estimation is provided by using the t statistic 关19兴. The reciprocal
of the t statistic is an estimate of the standard deviation of each
coefficient as a fraction of its value. Accordingly, coefficients with
low values for the t statistic are not accurately estimated. This test
forms the basis for model optimization by adding or deleting co-
efficients. A common statistical measure of significance of a re-
sponse surface model is the adjusted R 2 value, R adj 2
关19兴. The
2
maximum value for R adj is 1.0, which occurs when all of the
variation in the observed response values is described by the
trends of the response surface polynomial model.
3.2 Objective Function and Design Variables. The fol-
lowing objective function is minimized in the optimization
process:

F⫽1⫺ ␩ . (8)

The efficiency is defined as follows: Fig. 3 Surface grids of computational domain

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Fig. 4 Comparisons of computational results with measure-
ments at the impeller exit „Seo, Kim, and Kang †5‡…
this assumption. However, accuracy of the prediction is generally
acceptable even with the approximated models of the impeller.
Guo and Kim 关4兴 performed a three-dimensional unsteady cal-
culation using a commercial CFD code for a multiblade fan,
which is similar to the model used in this work. Due to a large
number of forward curved blades in the impeller, they used
794,435 grid points, which is an order of magnitude larger than
the number of grid points, 40,680 used in this work. Therefore, it
is found that large computing time and memory can be reduced
with the mathematical model for the impeller forces presented in
this work.
The ranges of design variables for selection of evaluation points
are shown in Table 2. To construct the response surface, each
range of design variables is normalized, so that the dimensionless
variable varies from ⫺1 to 1. For four design variables, there are
n t ⫽(n⫹1)(n⫹2)/2, namely, 15 unknown coefficients in the
polynomial. To determine these coefficients, 42 points for re-
sponse evaluations were selected by using the D-optimal design.
The values of unknown coefficients were obtained with the data at
the selected points by the commercial statistics software, the sta-
tistical package for the social sciences 共SPSS兲, which is used to
perform ANOVA and regression analysis along with other statis-
tical analyses in the wide field. The reliability of the response
Table 2 Ranges of design variables for selection of the points for response evaluation
Variables
Location of cutoff ␪ c 共deg兲
Radius of cutoff R c (mm)
Expansion angle of scroll ␣ 共deg兲
Width of impeller b/d 2
Table 3 Quality of the second-order response surface for the objective function
Model R2
1 0.983
Table 4 Cases of optimization
First
optimization
Constraint P o ( P s ⭓ P o )
Table 5 Quality of the second-order response surface for the fan static pressure
Model R2
1 0.996
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surface is improved by the t statistics and adjusted R 2 method.
The coefficients of response surface function were determined by
ANOVA and regression analysis, the results of which are summa-
rized in Table 3. Guinta 关18兴 suggested that the typical values of
2
R adj are in the range 0.9⭐R adj 2
⭐1.0, when the observed response
values are accurately predicted by the response surface model. In
this respect, the present response surface is quite reliable. The
optimum point on the response surface was found by a linear
programming method.
The optimizations with and without constraint, as shown in
Table 4, were carried out. The constraint was imposed on the fan
static pressure, P s , i.e., the difference between inlet and exit static
pressures of the fan, in order to prevent the pressure from being
lowered below specified level. One of the advantages of response
surface optimization method is the ability to test multiple objec-
tive functions and/or constraints without additional analyses of the
flow field.
Since the fan static pressure is dependent on design variables,
in order to impose the constraint, the response surface for the
static pressure should also be constructed. The results of regres-
sion analysis for this surface are shown in Table 5.
Figure 5 shows the results of sensitivity analysis of each design
variable for the reference and the first optimum shapes. Here, dv
indicates the percent change of each design variable. As shown in
this figure, the objective function is more sensitive to location of
the cutoff and expansion angle of the scroll than the radius of the
cutoff and width of the impeller near the optimum point.
As the main result of the optimizations, shown in Table 6, the
efficiency was successfully increased. In the first optimization
without constraint, the maximum efficiency of 96.9% was ob-
tained, while the fan static pressure was reduced by 37% in com-
parison with the reference fan. The constraints on static pressure
reduced the efficiency by only 1–2%, but guaranteed specified
minimum static pressures at given flow rate.
Due to the intrinsic error of response surface, the value of static
pressure on the surface, in general, does not coincide with the
value obtained from the flow analysis, but agrees with the value in
specified error bounds. Thus, even if the constraint is satisfied on
the response surface, it may not in the calculation. This is the
reason why, in Table 6, the fan static pressure in second optimi-
Lower bounds Upper bounds
70 84
4.0 6.0
3.7 5.7
0.4 0.7
R 2ad j Std. error of the estimate
0.973 2.08⫻10⫺2
Second Third
optimization optimization
100.0 Pa 130.0 Pa
2
R adj Std. error of the estimate
0.994 6.99
Transactions of the ASME

Fig. 5 Sensitivity analyses for reference and first optimum
shapes
zation does not satisfy exactly the specified constraint. It is one of
the weak points of response surface method that this kind of con-
straint cannot be imposed exactly.
Since the flow rate is fixed in the optimizations, each optimum
point may not be the maximum efficiency point of the correspond-
ing performance curve. Thus, it would be interesting, in the future,
to find the maximum efficiency by employing flow rate as one of
design parameters.
The optimum values of design variables are listed in Table 7. It
is found that several optimum values are out of bounds shown in
Table 2. However, since the range of each variable shown in Table
2 is not a constraint for the variable but a range for selection of
evaluation points, the optimum value of the variable can be out of
this range if it is located within the distance from the bound,
which is less than the distance between adjacent evaluation points.
The optimal values of the location and the radius of the cutoff are
similar to the results of Han, Maeng, and Yoo 关12兴. The optimum
value of the ratio of exit to inlet flow area, 4b/d 1 ⫽1.71 in the first
optimization, is less than a half of the value for reference shape,
3.47. This is consistent with the result obtained by Roth 关20兴,
which shows that efficiency increases as the width of impeller
decreases. However, it is found in Table 7 that the relationship
between impeller width and efficiency is far from linearity. Opti-
mum locations of cutoff are around 75°. And, as the radius of the
cutoff increases or as the expansion angle of the scroll decreases,
the static pressure increases with a decrease of efficiency at opti-
mum point. As Kind and Tobin 关1兴 suggested and also shown in
Figs. 6 and 7, reduction of impeller width 共b兲 reduces the relative
extent of flow recirculation zone through the impeller, the so-
called inactive zone, from 18.4% to 13.4% of the total exit surface
area of impeller.
At this moment, it is thought to be meaningful to discuss about
the relationship between the efficiency and the relative size of
inactive zone at the exit of impeller based on the database ob-
tained by the flow calculations. Figure 8 shows the plot of effi-
ciencies versus the sizes of the inactive zone. It is found that the
efficiency is not directly correlated with the relative size of inac-
tive zone. That is, enlargement of this inactive zone, in general,
does not result in a decrease of efficiency. And, it is also noted that
the size of inactive zone is strongly dependent on impeller width.
As impeller width reduces, the size of the inactive zone also re-
duces and becomes less dependent on design variables other than
the impeller width. For the impeller width of b/d 2 ⫽0.40, size of
the inactive zone is nearly independent of the other variables. In
contrast, as the impeller width increases, the efficiency becomes
less dependent on the other design variables.
To find the correlation of momentum in the scroll with effi-
ciency, two kinds of dimensionless momentum flux, i.e., C M t and
C M s , are defined as follows:
兰 A V t ␳ V c dA 兰 A V s ␳ V c dA
C M t⫽ , C M s⫽
␳ V in
2
A in ␳ V in
2
A in
where
V t ⫽ 冑V 2a ⫹V r2 ⫹V 2c , V s ⫽ 冑V 2a ⫹V r2
A is the cross-sectional area of the scroll, which is normal to
circumferential direction. V a , V r , and V c indicate axial, radial,
and circumferential components of velocity vector in the scroll,
respectively. V in and A in are the velocity and flow area at the inlet
of the fan, respectively. Then, these momentum fluxes are aver-
aged in the scroll as follows:

Table 6 Results of optimizations

First Second Third

Reference optimization optimization optimization
Efficiency 87.6% 96.9% 95.7% 94.6%
Static pressure 97.6 Pa 61.4 Pa 95.11Pa 139.0Pa

Table 7 Optimal values of design variables

First Second Third

Variables Reference optimization optimization optimization
Location of cutoff, ␪ c 共deg兲 77.0 74.99 75.88 75.42
Radius of cutoff, R c (mm) 5.0 5.094 5.196 5.617
Expansion angle of scroll, ␣ 共deg兲 4.7 6.521 6.465 6.190
Width of scroll, b/d 2 0.625 0.3438 0.3934 0.5606

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 Fig. 8 Efficiency versus relative size of inactive zone

C M s is correlated more strongly than C M t . Since C M s is related to

the strength of three-dimensional motion in the scroll, the results
indicate that the stronger three-dimensional motion in the scroll is
related to the higher level of the efficiency, which is defined by
Eq. 共9兲 based on total pressures. However, if we define the effi-
ciency ( ␩ s ) based on static pressures, the efficiency reduces rap-
idly as averaged momentum fluxes increase as shown in Fig. 11.

Fig. 6 Velocity vectors in reference and first optimum shapes

„S-S cross section in Fig. 1…

C M t⫽
1
Vol 冕 C M t dVol, and C M s⫽
1
Vol 冕 C M s dVol,

where the integrations are performed for the scroll volume 共Vol兲
in the range from ␪⫽90° to 360°. Circumferential variations of
dimensionless momentum fluxes are shown in Figs. 9共a兲 and 9共b兲.
Figures 10共a兲 and 10共b兲 are plots of efficiency versus averaged
momentum fluxes. It is found in these figures that, although both
momentum fluxes in the scroll are correlated with the efficiency,

Fig. 7 Inactive zones at the exit of impeller for reference and Fig. 9 Circumferential variations of momentum fluxes in
first optimum shapes scroll: „a… C Mt , „b… C Ms

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 With only 42 points for response evaluations, the main objective,
i.e., the efficiency is improved effectively in comparison with the
reference fan. With the restriction to guarantee the level of refer-
ence fan static pressure, the reduction in efficiency is not large.
From the results of sensitivity analysis, it is found that the effi-
ciency is more sensitive to the location of the cutoff and the ex-
pansion angle of the scroll than the other design variables. Further
analyses of computational results indicate that the efficiency is not
directly correlated with the relative size of inactive zone at the
exit of impeller, which is strongly dependent on impeller width,
and also that the stronger three-dimensional motion in the scroll is
related to the higher level of total efficiency, but to the lower level
of static efficiency.

Nomenclature
A ⫽ Flow area
b ⫽ Width of impeller
c r , c u ⫽ Radial and tangential components of flow ve-
locity, respectively
C M s , C M t ⫽ Dimensionless momentum fluxes in scroll
d ⫽ Diameter of impeller
F ⫽ Response function or objective function
f ⫽ Blade force
ṁ ⫽ Mass flow rate
n ⫽ Number of regression coefficients
Fig. 10 Correlations between efficiency and averaged momen-
P t , P s ⫽ Total and static pressures, respectively
tum fluxes in the scroll: „a… C Mt , „b… C Ms
r 2 , r 3 ⫽ Radii of impeller exit and scroll surface, re-
spectively
R c ⫽ Radius of cutoff
5 Conclusions u i ⫽ Cartesian velocity component
In order to maximize the efficiency, using location and radius of u ⫽ Blade speed
the cutoff, the expansion angle of the scroll and width of impeller w ⫽ Weighting factor
as design variables, the response surface optimization method V ⫽ Flow velocity
with three-dimensional Navier-Stokes analysis was successfully x i ⫽ Cartesian coordinate or design variable
applied to the aerodynamic design of forward-curved-blade cen- X, X b ⫽ Axial coordinate and width of impeller, respec-
trifugal fan. Navier-Stokes analysis using a mathematical model tively
of impeller forces is very effective to reduce computing time. ␣ ⫽ Expansion angle of scroll
␤ ⫽ Blade angle
␤ i ⫽ Coefficient of response polynomial
␦ i j ⫽ Kronecker delta
␧ ⫽ Slip factor
␾ ⫽ Flow coefficient
␩, ␩ s ⫽ Total and static efficiencies, respectively
␩ im ⫽ Efficiency of impeller
␪ c ⫽ Location of cutoff
␳ ⫽ Fluid density
␻ ⫽ Angular velocity
Subscripts
1, 2 ⫽ Inlet and outlet of blade, respectively
a, c, r ⫽ Axial, circumferential, and radial directions, respec-
tively
in, ex ⫽ Inlet and exit of the fan
Diacritic
Overbar ⫽ Average value

References
Fig. 11 Correlations between static efficiency and averaged
momentum fluxes in the scroll: „a… C Mt , „b… C Ms
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