Internal Flow Condition of High Power Contra-Rotating Small-Sized Axial Fan

Abstract

Data centers have been built with spread of cloud computing. Further, electric power consumption of it is growing rapidly. High power cooling small-sized fans; high pressure and large flow rate small-sized fan, are used for servers in the data centers and there is a strong demand to increase power of it because of increase of quantity of heat from the servers. Contra-rotating rotors have been adopted for some of high power cooling fans to meet the demand for high power. There is a limitation of space for servers and geometrical restriction for cooling fans because spokes to support fan motors, electrical power cables and so on should be installed in the cooling fans. It is important to clarify complicated internal flow condition and influence of a geometric shape of the cooling fans on performance to achieve high performance of the cooling fans. In the present paper, the performance and the flow condition of the high power contra-rotating small-sized axial fan with a 40mm square casing are shown by experimental and numerical results. Furthermore, influence of the geometrical shape of the small-sized cooling fan on the internal flow condition is clarified and design guideline to improve the performance is discussed.