On the role of CFD in the aerodynamic development of industrial fans or from equations to colors (and back again)

00 - Keynote Lectures

The current industrial practice entails a number of codes for fluid dynamics simulations, and this
circumstance let the aerodynamic designers choose among different methodologies to transform governing
equations into useful flow field description.
The selection of the proper numerical approach can be quite a conundrum for engineers, as the number of
available options is so high that ending up with just stunning coloured pictures is more than a possibility.
In the following some of the possible choices for the numerical investigation of fans and other
turbomachinery components are discussed, spanning from RANS to LES computations and dealing with
different aspects such as virtual prototyping, performance prediction, noise suppression and three-
dimensional design.


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Alessandro CORSINI, Associate Professor of Fluid Machinery, Sapienza University of Rome

Alessandro is the leader of the team for industrial fans and blowers CFD group at the Department of
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University, Rome. Following his PhD in 1996 on numerical
methods for fluid-dynamics, he has worked in this field by developing original stabilized numerical
formulations for the computation of turbulent flows in turbomachinery. He was invited ERASMUS-
SOCRATES lecturer at Budapest University of Technology and Economics and, since 2004, he is visiting
scientist of the Team for Advanced Flow Simulation and Modeling TAFSM, Rice University in Houston, TX
USA.
In the last decade, Alessandro’s research interests focused more on the development of fan technologies
and include passive noise control devices, stall aerodynamics and early-warning diagnostics, and modeling
of the erosion in induced draft fans. Alessandro is the author of more than 100 technical papers in his
research areas and he is also the author of 3 international patents in turbomachinery applications.