Forward sweep to improve the efficiency of rotor-only tube-axial fans with controlled vortex design blades

Common blade design techniques are based on the assumption of the airflow laying on cylindrical surfaces. This behav- iour is proper only for free-vortex flow, whereas radial fluid migration along the span is always present in case of controlled vortex design blades. The paper presents a design procedure to increase aeraulic efficiency of fan rotors originally designed using a controlled vortex criterion, based on the assumption that a blade section positioning taking into account the actual airflow direction could be beneficial for rotor aeraulic performance. The proposed procedure employs a three-dimensional aerofoil positioning and blade forward sweep. The procedure is applied to a rotor-only tube-axial fan featuring a 0.44 hub-to-tip ratio, an almost constant swirl velocity distribution at the rotor outlet and a quite low blade Reynolds number. Rotor prototypes deriving from step-by-step blade modifications are experimentally tested on an ISO 5801 standard test rig. Results show the importance of considering radial fluid migration for highly loaded rotors.