Abstract
In a centrifugal blower with diffuser vanes, the noise level may unexpectedly increase at certain numbers of revolutions. In particular, the phenomenon of acoustic resonance due to aerodynamic interaction tones between the impeller and the diffuser is a serious problem. In this paper, we develop a physical model to describe this phenomenon. The model assumes that inner flow paths both in the impeller and the diffuser behave as quasi-one-dimensional acoustic tubes. We constructed a mathematical model to predict critical numbers of revolutions at which resonance occurs, and conducted experiments to verify the model, and the results agree well with the mathematical model. We also propose an effective method for suppressing the resonance in which diffuser vanes with slits are used. Each diffuser vane has a slit located just behind the end of the facing area between neighboring vanes. The location of the slit is determined by the mathematical model. Experiments show that the method successfully reduces keen noise by as much as 8 dB.
