Performance Improvement of a Vacuum Cleaner by CFD Analysis around Motor

진공청소기 흡입효율 개선을 위한 모터 주위의 유동해석

A vacuum cleaner is the widely used home equipment. However, it has a trouble with too much power consumption. Most losses occur at the centrifugal fan. To remedy this trouble the investigation of motor, which is the main component of vacuum cleaner, is required. The flow characteristics around the high-speed rotating centrifugal fan which is influenced by the very low inlet pressure is quite different from a commonly used fan. Hence it is quite difficult to analyze the flow by the experimental means or by the numerical simulation. In this research, it is aimed to improve the air-suction performance of a vacuum cleaner through the flow analysis around a motor. The efficiency of the centrifugal fan is affected by blade shape, blade number, blade pitch, etc. The influence of the shape of impeller on the flow is investigated in this study. The flow around the centrifugal fan is simulated by applying the moving mesh. To verify the validity of the computation results, the air flow rate and the pressure field to the cleaner is compared with the experimental data. All simulations are performed by using commercial code SC/Tetra. The calculated results show good agreement with the experimental ones and it is believed to be promising to use computational simulation in the improvement of the vacuum cleaner performance.