In addition to these high-speed cases, there are a number of published studies on low-speed cross-flow fans of various geometries showing excellent correlation between sliding mesh URANS predictions and experimental results. Among these are the works of Cho and Moon [51] and Moon et al. [15], which also include aeroacoustic calculations utilizing the predicted unsteady blade and wall surface pressures to compute far-field noise radiation based on the Ffowcs Williams–Hawkings equation and Curle's equation, respectively. Their studies investigate the noise characteristics of the fans with uniform and non-uniform circumferential blade spacing patterns in terms of frequency modulation of blade passage tones.
As an illustration of the capability of these unsteady sliding mesh CFD tools to predict the detailed flow field in a cross-flow fan, a contour plot comparison of total pressure between CFD and experiment at 12,500 rpm is given in Fig. 29, taken from Kummer [30]. At the impeller rotational speed of 12,500 rpm the flow field is nearly choked, and the blade relative Mach number in the second stage through-flow region is as high as 2.5. In the figure, the colored contours correspond to the computed CFD results, over which the experimental data are superimposed and are displayed as contour lines. Close agreement is seen between the CFD results and test data, especially in the through-flow region. In particular, the simulations accurately predict: (1) the total pressure level achieved by the cross-flow fan (up to 1.6), (2) the location and size of the eccentric vortex, and (3) the presence of a weak normal shock in the exit diffuser.