Effect of a Gurney flap on the performance of an axial fan

Chen Liu, Haijun Xie, Jun Xu, Chen Jian*, Ren Dai 2 School of Energy and Power Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology 3 E-mail: [email protected] 4 Abstract: 5 The Gurney flap (GF) is a miniature lift-enhancement device and is usually mounted at the trailing 6 edge of an airfoil. The GF and has been successfully applied to isolated airfoils, multi-element 7 airfoils, and aircraft wings as well as helicopter rotor due to its attractive features of simplicity, cost8 effective and separation control. The GF also has aroused the attention of researchers in the 9 turbomachinery industry. However, limited studies are currently available on the application of a 10 GF to an axial fan. 11 Hence, in this paper, we conduct a wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) 12 investigation on an axial fan profiled with a NACA 65-(12)10 airfoil to evaluate the effect of the GF 13 on the performance of the fan. We also present the detailed flow features of the fan with and 14 without the GF after validating the simulation results with the experimental results. The 15 experimental results show that as the GF is installed higher on the fan blade, it can produce a higher 16 total pressure rise accompanied with a greater loss of efficiency. The installation of the GF also 17 enlarges the work capacity of the fan. Detailed flow field analysis, including the surface pressure 18 distribution, vorticity distribution at the trailing edge and streamline distribution of the fan, is 19 carried out to understand the mechanisms of the effect of the GF on the performance of the fan. 20