The Company

Colchester Fan Systems Ltd (CFS) was formed in 1998 to provide high performance bespoke fans for specialised applications. Its founders, Matthew Dutton and Steve Hill have over 50 years experience in the fan and aerospace industries, and have brought together their individual experience to the fan industry. CFS is an ISO9001.2000 approved company.

Text Box: CFD Analysis of Mixed Flow Fan Stage

Text Box: Mixed Flow Fan for High Speed Train Application

The Service

CFS offers a ‘design to specification’ service, which usually consists of the following stages:

· Discussion at the specification stage with the end user, to determine alternative options for the application. This will involve outline design of several fan options, and close liaison with the customer, to ensure that the final system is as close to optimum as is possible. For example, the specification of a dynamic braking resistor requires close co-operation between the resistor supplier and the fan manufacturer to achieve the demanding packaging and performance requirements of these applications.

· Detailed design of the fan. This will involve the use of a variety of advanced computational techniques:

· Preliminary design methods to determine overall geometry, and initial blade and vane angles. These methods have been developed in-house, and have been extensively calibrated against test results.

· Detailed design of blading, usually using quasi-3D computational techniques to predict blade loading.

· Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of design, using Ansys-CFX. This is used to obtain a numerical ‘rig test’, to confirm that the target performance is achieved, and highlight any areas for improvement.

· Finite element stress analysis of the blades and structures, to ensure safe operation and to minimise weight. This includes linear stress analysis and mode shape analysis for the prediction of blade and structure natural frequencies.

· Manufacture of a prototype of the fan using techniques and methods developed in-house.

· Performance test to BS848 Part 1, and noise test to BS848 Part2. as well as many other international standards are conducted in our laboratory at Colchester.

Text Box: Stress Analysis of Mixed Flow Rotor

Product Range

Since 1998 over 30 different fans have been designed and tested by CFS. These cover a flow range up to 25m^3/s, and a pressure rise up to 10000 Pa. Axial, mixed flow and radial fans have been designed for the appropriate applications, with tip speeds up to 120m/s.

Text Box: Flow and Pressure Range of CFS Fans