The development of air flow downstream of a stationary fan located in a circular duct was investigated. The objective of the research was to study the evolution of the velocity profiles and pressure gradients at various axial locations. The velocity profiles were measured at three different Reynolds numbers using a five-hole directional probe. Because the stationary fan caused the inlet velocity profile to be highly distorted, it was determined experimentally that the development length exceeded 20 duct diameters. Since this was greater than the length of the apparatus, a corresponding numerical model of the flow was generated using the commercial CFD software Fluent-6.1/6.2. The numerical model was validated against the experimental results. The hydrodynamic development length was therein determined numerically.

Volume Subject Area:
5th Symposium on Industrial Application of Swirling Flows
Topics:
Ducts, Flow (Dynamics), Computer simulation, Air flow, Computational fluid dynamics, Computer software, Pressure gradient, Probes, Reynolds number
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