Quality fans

The quality of fans is rated by their performance in moving the air effectively and quietly. This is monitored by such factors as the pitch, length, and number of ceiling fan blades, and Their revolutions per minute (rpm s).

What is the Purpose of Ceiling Fan?

1. To provide a breeze thereby creating the "wind chill factor"
2. Uniform velocity and Pressure over its entire area.

3. To circulate the air throughout a room or area 4. The ceiling fan needs to move air at low velocity with inexpensive components. 5. The ceiling fan, is built to keep the occupants of a room comfortable by moving air gently. 6. It`s engineers work to minimize noise while the fan rotates at low speed (for safety reasons) and to keep the construction costs, and therefore the purchase price, low.

Blade Pitch -1
Blade pitch is the angle of the blades when compared to the horizontal. Quality fans generally have a blade pitch of 12-14 degrees. Blade pitch is the angle, measured in degrees, between the horizontal and a ceiling fan's blades. Ceiling fan blade pitch is important because it makes a difference in how much air a fan is able to circulate throughout a room. Ceiling fan need to move a just-right amount of air...not too much (you don't need a wind tunnel in your room) and not too little (you do need to feel a nice breeze). So, optimally, the blade pitch for a ceiling fan should be between 12 to 15 degrees. That will produce the ideal level of air circulation when using a fan, in both summer and winter The closer to the tip of the blade you get, the faster the blade is moving through the air and so the greater the apparent wind angle is. Thus the blade needs to be turned further at the tips than at the root, in other words it must be built with a twist along its length. Typically the twist is around 10-20 from root to tip. The requirement to twist the blade has implications on the ease of manufacture.

Blade Pitch -2
The higher the pitch the more is the replacement of air. Good quality ceiling fan blades have a pitch of 12-14 degrees. Blade pitches as low as 8 or 10 degrees leads to poorer performance and thus lower Air flow and higher noise levels While the short ceiling fan blades with minimum pitches can swirl at high speeds, they do not make for much air circulation and they are noisier than the types of fans with longer blades and higher pitch though they rotate more slowly.

Blade Pitch -3
The angular edges of the ceiling fan blades are termed as the pitches which are particularly important for the effective movement of the air. The shape enables the blade to apply pressure to the air in front of it and thus the air is forced downwards.

Blade Twist

Wobbling
One of the issues people sometimes find with their ceiling fans is wobbling. While many people may think that the wobbling is caused by the motor, this is usually not the case. The wobbling of the fan is usually caused by blades that are out of weight alignment. This is due to the use of warped, bent, or unmatched blades. Another reason for wobbling is that the blades may not have been screwed into the brackets straight

Fan blade need

The individual blades will be narrow at the tip where the blade velocity is high and will widen towards the hub, where more blade area is required due to lower blade velocity

The angle of Blade to the plane of rotation will be minimum at the tip and increase as the hub is approached.

Why so?
If a certain portions of the blade are not able to develop the pressure necessarily being carried by other portions of the blade, Back flow of air at these points will occur Such would be the case in the vicinity of the hub if a typical airplane propeller were adapted as a axial flow fan.

How do ceiling fans help heat in the winter ?

Much the same as they help with cooling in circulation. Running your heat in the winter, hot air rises to the ceiling, and so much of the heat is wasted. Running a ceiling fan during the winter, to push down warm air from the ceiling and eliminate cold spots, can save a great deal of heating energy.

Effect of More blades

More blades results in a greater load on the motor, and a greater load on the motor causes it to operate at a slower speed. A fan with less blades operating at a faster speed will more more air than a fan with more blades operating at a slower speed. This is why most commercial fans have three blades and a high speed motor, to provide the greatest amount of airflow efficiently.

How Large a fan Hub should be ??

A hub must be large enough to pickup where the blades are no longer able to carry load The hub serves two major purposes 1) It allows termination of the blades at a point where they would cease to function efficiently 2) It prevents back flow of air through the center

Effect of hub size

If the hub is too large for the required performance the result will be an increase in velocity pressure due to the smaller net opening and subsequent waste of power. If the hub is too small for the required performance the result will be deterioration of flow near hub, possibly even a reversal of flow in this area.

Hub
As the radius is reduced and the center of fan approached, the reduction in the speed of the blade section reduces the potential work Which may be accomplished by the blade width and increase in mean blade angle Blade width will begins to increase abnormally and the blade angle will rise sharply until additional width and angle are no longer practical.at this point the hub must begin.

H U B

Noise vs. Efficiency

As a rule, as the number of blades goes up, the fan tends to be quieter while it circulates less air. Additional blades increase the drag coefficient on a ceiling fan's motor and will, therefore, slow it down. This is one of the reasons why industrial fans (like wind turbines) usually only have two or three blades; they can go faster and move more air, and noise isn't so much of a concern for them.

ACFM - actual cubic feet per minute

actual cubic feet per minute; the quantity or volume of a gas flowing at any point in a system. Fans are rated and selected on the basis of ACFM, as a fan handles the same volume of air regardless of density.

Bernoullis Theorem
the principle that the total energy per unit of mass in the streamline flow of a moving fluid is constant, being the sum of the potential energy, the kinetic energy, and the energy because of pressure. In terms of air movement, the theorem states that static pressure plus velocity pressure as measured at a point upstream in the direction of airflow is equal to the static pressure plus velocity pressure as measured at a point downstream in the direction of airflow plus the friction and dynamic losses between the points

Efficiency, mechanical total

The ratio of fan output to the power applied to the fan; can be helpful in selecting fan size, type, or manufacturer for the same application

Thus the important specifications required for our component would be: 1. Effective Air Flow 2. Low Noise levels

3. No Wobbling
4. Durability 5. Light weight for low power consumption 6. Should not get rusted. 7. Aesthetics 8. Low cost

Blade selection
The airfoil shape of the fan blade should be selected on the basis of higher efficiency That is High lift and low drag As well as the lift co efficient is desirable in particular instance. The abruptness at which stalling occur should also be considered

Angle of attack
Angle of Attack : is the acute angle measured between the chord of an airfoil and the relative wind.

Angle of incidence (Pitch)

Angle of Incidence : is the acute angle between the wing's chord line and the longitudinal axis of the airplane.

aspect ratio ( length to chord ).

Lift force
Lift : is produced by a lower pressure created on the upper surface of an airplane's wings compared to the pressure on the wing's lower surfaces,causing the wing to be LIFTED upward. The special shape of the airplane wing (airfoil) is designed so that air flowing over it will have to travel a greater distance and faster resulting in a lower pressure area thus lifting the wing upward. Lift is that force which opposes the force of gravity (or weight).

Lift force

Angle of attack Vs. Lift

The more curved side generates low air pressures while high pressure air pushes on the other side of the aerofoil. The net result is a lift force perpendicular to the direction of flow of the air. The lift force increases as the blade is turned to present itself at a greater angle to the wind. This is called the angle of attack. At very large angles of attack the blade stalls and the lift decreases again. So there is an optimum angle of attack to generate the maximum lift.

The drag

There is, unfortunately, also a retarding force on the blade: the drag. This is the force parallel to the wind flow, and also increases with angle of attack. If the aerofoil shape is good, the lift force is much bigger than the drag, but at very high angles of attack, especially when the blade stalls, the drag increases dramatically. So at an angle slightly less than the maximum lift angle, the blade reaches its maximum lift/drag ratio. The best operating point will be between these two angles.

Lift equation
Lift depends upon (1) shape of the airfoil (2) the angle of attack (3) the area of the surface exposed to the airstream (4) the square of the air speed (5) the air density.

Pitch Angle
Pitch Angle : The rotor blade pitch angle is the acute angle between the blade chord line and the rotor plane of rotation

In general the best lift/drag characteristics are obtained by an aerofoil that is fairly thin: its thickness might be only 10-15% of its chord length

Because the tip of the blade is moving faster than the root, it passes through more volume of air, hence must generate a greater lift force to slow that air down enough. Fortunately, lift increases with the square of speed so its greater speed more than allows for that. In reality the blade can be narrower close to the tip than near the root and still generate enough lift

Problem with flat plate

A flat blade has two major drawbacks: a nearly even chord length over its entire span and a fixed pitch angle. Because the tip of a blade moves at a higher rotational speed than its root, air flow over a conventional fan blade is lowest near the hub and highest at the tip. Smoothing this distribution would allow the entire blade to contribute equally to moving air. standard for ceiling fans of Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL), a product safety testing organization [19], limits the blade rotational speed to between 50 and 200 rpm [20], so the blade design had to accommodate that requirement. Parker said that that requirement presented a challenge, because propellers normally spin much faster The research was made more challenging because finding an aerodynamics expert with experience in low-speed applications proved difficult

 Parker examined several ceiling fans and determined that most caused air to move at speeds of approximately 2 m/s. So that the enhanced ceiling fan would be a competitive product, the AeroVironment team sought to achieve that flow rate (2 m/s) in the new blade configuration (while satisfying the UL constraint of a fan speed no greater than 200 rpm).