The Impact of Three-Dimensional Analysis on Fan Design

In the last few years, great strides have been made in the numerical simulation of flows in turbomachinery blade rows. Efforts began with the development of two-dimensional (2-D) solutions such as those of Katsanis, et. al., Dodge, Gopalakrishnan, and others. These solutions solved subsonic, and in some cases, transonic flows in a blade-to-blade plane. By proper use of these methods, much of the information previously obtainable only from cascade testing could now be computed. Although losses could not be directly calculated, Dodge and Serovy showed that inviscid deviation angles, minimum loss angles of attack, and relative ranking between competing blade shapes could be determined by analysis.