Investigation of Flow Behavior around Corotating Blades in a Double-Spindle Lawn Mower Deck

• Main Authors: Chon W., Amano R. S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2005-01-01
• Series: International Journal of Rotating Machinery
• Subjects: experimental investigation; computational fluid dynamics; laser Doppler velocimetry; lawn mower; rotating blades
• Online Access: http://www.hindawi.net/access/get.aspx?journal=ijrm&volume=2005&pii=S1023621X03502056

<p>When the airflow patterns inside a lawn mower deck are understood, the deck can be redesigned to be efficient and have an increased cutting ability. To learn more, a combination of computational and experimental studies was performed to investigate the effects of blade and housing designs on a flow pattern inside a <math alttext="1.1un{m}"> <mn>1.1</mn><mtext>m</mtext> </math> wide corotating double-spindle lawn mower deck with side discharge. For the experimental portion of the study, air velocities inside the deck were measured using a laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) system. A high-speed video camera was used to observe the flow pattern. Furthermore, noise levels were measured using a sound level meter. For the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) work, several arbitrary radial sections of a two-dimensional blade were selected to study flow computations. A three-dimensional, full deck model was also developed for realistic flow analysis. The computational results were then compared with the experimental results.</p>