FLT Working Group Fans - Benefits and Results of Pre-Competitive Community Research

Fan Design & Materials

For more than five decades, the Research Association for Air and Drying Technology (FLT) has been offering its members a platform for pre-competitive industrial community research. Industry experts and scientists from over 20 German research institutes work closely together in project working groupes. Within the working group the FLT members determine and develop the technical topics, objectives and contents of the projects. By participating in the project-accompanying working groupes, the industrial participants benefit from the efficient knowledge transfer with the research centers as well as from the free use of all research results. The close collaboration with the universities also offers the companies further perspectives, such as contact with very well-trained engineering science graduates, as well as the opportunity to initiate bilateral research projects.
At the moment the FLT consists of the two working groups "air conditioning - technical building equipment " and "fans". The fan projects initiated by approximately 20 members of the fan working group - mainly fan manufacturers - are aimed at improving the efficiency and acoustics of axial and radial fans used in industrial applications as well as in room ventilation and air conditioning. Other research areas include the use of new materials, technologies and manufacturing processes as well as the development of innovative concepts for controlling, networking and monitoring the operation of fans.
Since the FLT was established, more than 300 research projects have been initiated. Multi-year projects are funded 100% by financial resources of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) via the Industrial Cooperative Research Associations (AiF). Smaller projects with shorter duration are also financed from the existing resources of the Research Association.
It is intended to provide an overview of FLT's ongoing activities, as well as a review of the projects carried out over the last 15 years by the fan working group. The aim is to summarize which research topics were finished by which universities. Particulary interesting research results are presented and explained. On the one hand a thematic focus is on the investigation of methods and concepts for the aerodynamic optimization of the efficiency and the air performance of fans. Other very interesting challenges are the development of know-how on aeroacoustic source mechanisms and the perception of fan noise as well as the validation of acoustic simulations tools.