A Numerical Analysis on the System Impedance in a Fan Cooling System

To seek the fan operating point on a cooling system with fans, it is very important to determine the system impedance curve and it has been usually examined with the fan tester based on ASHRAE standard and AMCA standard. This leads to a large investment in time and cost, because it could not be executed until the system is made actually. Therefore it is necessary to predict the system impedance curve through numerical analysis so that we could reduce the measurement time and effort. This paper presents how the system impedance curve (pressure drop curve) is computed by CFD in substitute for experiment. In reverse order to the experimental principle of the fan tester, pressure difference was adopted first as inlet and outlet boundary conditions of the system and then flow rate was calculated. After determining the system impedance curve, it was compared with experimental results. Also the computational domain of the system was investigated to minimize computational time.