Coherent Flow Structures Near Tongue Region in a Centrifugal Fan With Forward-Curved Blades

The unsteady characteristics of the velocity field around the tongue of the volute in a centrifugal fan with forward-curved blades were investigated by time-resolved particle image velocimetry and mode decomposition analysis, i.e., proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and spectral proper orthogonal decomposition (SPOD). Both POD and SPOD analysis reveal the existence of two types of unsteadiness in the flow field in the volute, one is the large-scale fluctuations at rotation frequency and its high-order harmonics in the main outlet flow, the other is due to the jet–wake structures at blade passing frequency in the cutoff clearance region. Additionally, SPOD analysis reveals a third type of disturbance, which is characterized as strip-like velocity structures at the intermediate frequency. The geometric and dynamic features of these coherent flow structures are inspected by the eigenfunction and their reduced-order reconstruction. In comparison with the POD analysis, the SPOD analysis enables the examination of the spatial pattern of each frequency component due to its dual-orthogonality nature. These structures direct impact the tongue, and thus might be responsible for the generation of strong wall-pressure fluctuation on the nose of the tongue. Due to the frequency mixing limitation of POD analysis, they cannot be easily identified from the leading-order POD modes. Furthermore, the frequency range of these three groups of disturbances, as well as their spatial extension, are determined via SPOD analysis and reduced-order reconstruction.