Design and Finite Element Analysis of Industrial Radial Flow Impeller.

This paper is concerned with the finite element analysis and modal testing of an industrial radial flow impeller. The goal is to determine and verify the vibration and stress characteristics of the impeller using analytical techniques. The static structural of the impeller with tapered blades was built using Cero. The convergence properties of the FE model was then verified by mesh refinement and mass distribution methods. Next, a pre-test plan was performed before conducting a modal test in order to select the material on the impeller. Analysis testing using modal analysis techniques was used to measure the vibration properties of the impeller, components. The natural frequencies graph was then compared with the same results obtained from static structural and showed good agreement. Finally, a parametric study was conducted on disc thickness, blade thickness, leading edge profiles and blade mistuning. It was found that the effect of varying disc thickness on the lower modes of the impeller was not significant. However, significant natural frequency shifts were observed for the higher modes. It was also concluded that varying the blade leading edge position had a marked effect on the natural frequencies while the lower modes were somehow insensitive to the variation of trailing edge position.