Experimental Study of the Effect of Serrations on Axial Flow Fan Blade Trailing Edge

Rotor wakes shed from a compressor rotor impinge on downstream blades and is a major source of rotor-stator interaction noise and much research has been dedicated on wake attenuation. Serrated trailing edges is one such wake attenuation technique where the vortices produced at the serrated trailing edges enhance mixing and create a more uniform flow at stator inlet. The present paper investigates the effect of serrations on the trailing edge of a forced vortex axial fan blade. Experimental investigations were carried out at rotor outlet using pneumatic probes and fast response pressure sensors. It is found that total and static pressures reduce in serrated blades due to reduced turning and hence reduced work input. The absolute tangential velocity wake deficit decreases in serration valleys and improvement in axial velocity wake deficit is also found. Improvements as large as 19% and 18% decrease in absolute tangential velocity and axial velocity wake deficit are found at certain radii. The spanwise shape of the wake is altered by the serrations and a wake pattern undulating in the spanwise direction is observed. These are expected to bring down the circumferential variation of the velocity and its phase before entering the next row of blades and bring down the tonal noise.