by Tony » Wed Apr 05, 2006 6:41 pm
Robert, there are some issues that worry me a bit about that fan rotor. The main one is that the blades are only supported along one side. Centrifugal force plus air pressure is going to try to tear out the blades from the supporting disk.
The other difficulty is that aluminium fatigues very easily. It may run for a while, and then start to crack around the roots of the blades. It only has to toss one blade, and the unbalance will destroy the whole thing in an instant.
All the commercial high pressure rotors I have seen have been constructed from two flat sheet steel disks, with fairly short straight radial blades arranged around the outer periphery. Curved blades are never normally used with high pressures.
A successful homemade rotor would be well within the capabilities of most of us here with simple hand tools and a bit of care. I have two commercial rotors here that look surprisingly crude in construction. Unfortunately I still do not have a digital camera, but hopefully soon I will be able to give you guys some pictures, dimensions, and test results. I am convinced this holds more promise than a bunch of vacuum cleaner motors.
Anyhow, curved blades have some interesting characteristics. Forward facing blades (leaning into the direction of rotation) will give an almost constant pressure over a surprisingly wide range of flows, which can be very useful for us, but drive horsepower varies hugely with mass air flow. If you blank off the flow to zero, pressure hardly changes, and motor power falls very low.
Rearward curving blades have a far more constant drive power requirement, but pressure will fall off rapidly as flow increases. That also can be useful for some applications because the motor cannot be overloaded, but for a flow bench, the test pressure would be much more touchy to keep constant. With rearward curving vanes, blanking off the flow to zero would cause a very substantial rise in pressure, and motor power would remain fairly high. That is not ideal for us either.
I believe many vacuum cleaner motors have rearward facing blades which is ideal for a vacuum cleaner. Very high suction at low flows, and the motor will not be overloaded at maximum open flow. Perfect for a vacuum cleaner, not so good for a flowbench.
You see figures like 100+ inches of water at zero flow, and ten inches of water at 80 CFM. The pressure just fades away to nothing as flow volume increases.
A large diameter straight bladed rotor might be something like 50 inches of water at zero flow and 45 inches of water at 500+ CFM. A much more constant pressure versus flow, and much more user friendly in a flowbench.
Also known as the infamous "Warpspeed" on some other Forums.