Fuel cell vehicles, an important class of new energy vehicles, use compressors to increase the inlet pressure into the fuel cell. The high efficiency and fast response of centrifugal compressors make them an ideal option for the compressors used in fuel cell vehicles. However, centrifugal air compressors have poor off-design performance. Flow field deviation analyses were used here to study the three-dimensional flow distributions inside a centrifugal air compressor for design and off-design conditions. The flow separation on the suction surface of the main blade for off-design conditions is shown to be the main factor leading to the poor performance. The pressure distribution change on the suction surface of the main blade between the off-design and design conditions is then used as the optimization objective to improve the centrifugal air compressor design. The analyses consider various back sweep angles, forward lean angles and vaneless diffuser lengths. The optimized air compressor efficiency is improved by 2% at the design working condition and 5% at the near-stall working condition. Thus, this optimization method using flow field deviation analyses is proven to be effective.
SHAO Gaopeng
,
ZHANG Yangjun
. Optimization design of a fuel cell air compressor based on a flow field deviation analysis[J]. Journal of Tsinghua University(Science and Technology), 2019
, 59(6)
: 490
-496
.
DOI: 10.16511/j.cnki.qhdxxb.2019.25.001
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