A Study on Surge and Stall under the Interaction of Parallel Axial flow fan in Tunnel

Abstract

In the ventilation design for tunnels above 10km, an axial flow fan of great power needs to be set in ventilation shafts. There are few provisions on the setting modes and less discussion of parallel axial flow fan mode in the Specifications for Design of Ventilation and Lighting of Highway Tunnels. All of these bring a lot of difficulties about the axial fan selection, layout and control design. There is no specialized research on axial flow fan for tunnels and no studies on surge and stall under the interaction of parallel axial flow fan in tunnel in spite of the more and more application of parallel axial flow fan. So, this paper conducts a study on surge and stall under the interaction of parallel axial flow fan in tunnels. Through the study on the operating principle and analysis of parallel axial flow fan, we can know that the noise will increase suddenly, which will in turn result in fan vibration and running instability once the stall occurs. When a fan surges, the air volume and pressure, the motor current will fluctuate sharply, which brings significantly increased vibration and noise. At the same time, the rotary blade and the shell are subject to considerable stress effects and the fan will possibly suffer from great damage. The surge will occur in the unstable zone of axial fan performance curve. The strong pulsation and periodic oscillation of the air flow will increase the noise, which is a serious damage to the fan. So an axial fan should avoid this zone in running. With two axial flow fans of the same power parallel, the mutual influence is not very great. Therefore this research will focus on the efficiency in the case of two fans with a high and a low power parallel. Stall will occur if the outside pressure is greater than the outlet pressure. Once the stall happens, the noise will increase suddenly, which will in turn result in fan vibration and running instability. When two fans parallel, i.e. when the power ratio of the parallel fans is over 5.3, the possibility of the small fan's stall is high, otherwise it is small. With regard to the running efficiency of parallel axial flow fans and the starting safety, it is better to parallel two fans, and the fans with adjustable movable vanes or frequency control or the ordinary nonadjustable fans can be used.