Suppression of Rotating Stall by Wall Roughness Control in Vaneless Diffusers of Centrifugal Blowers

By positioning the completely rough wall locally on the hub side diffuser wall alone in the vaneless diffuser, the flow rate of rotating stall inception was decreased by 42% at a small pressure drop less than 1%. This is based on the fact that the local reverse flow occurs firstly in the hub side in most centrifugal blowers with the backswept blade impeller. The 3-D boundary layer calculation shows that the increase in wall shear component normal to the main-flow direction decreases markedly the skewed angle of the 3-D boundary layer, and results in suppression of the 3-D separation. It is also clarified theoretically that the diffuser pressure recovery is hardly deteriorated by the rough wall positioned downstream of R = 1.2 because the increase in the radial momentum change, resulting from reduction in the skewed angle of the 3-D boundary layer, supports the adverse pressure gradient.