Numerical simulation of the width and angle of the rotor blade on the air flow rate of a 350 kW air-cooled eddy current dynamometer

Abstract

Design of cooling part of air-cooled eddy current dynamometer plays an important role since the temperature rise will dramatically drop the load capacity. The research aims to investigate the effect of the rotor design on the air flow rate of a 350 kW air-cooled eddy current dynamometer, which has 16 blades and a rotor diameter of 520 mm. The impacts of the rotor blade width and rotor speed, as well as inlet and outlet angle, were analyzed against the air flow rate. The variation of the blade width was 50 - 90 mm, the inlet angle was 55° - 73°, the outlet angle was 17° - 35°, while the rotor speed was 750 to 3000 rpm. The finite volume method was used to solve the problem. It was found that the addition of the blade width would increase the air flow rate so that it could increase the heat transfer rate and the power absorbed capacity. There were an optimum inlet and outlet blade angle, which generated the maximum air flow rate. The optimum inlet and outlet angle was 64° and 26°, respectively. The study concluded that there are optimum parameters which give the best dynamometer performance.