The investigation of turbomachinery applications using beamforming technology is rather
common in the aeroacoustics community, but usually restricted to the investigation
of axial flow turbomachinery. This investigation presents the development of a measurement
setup and beamforming methodology that enables the investigation of centrifugal turbomachinery.
A test setup utilizing Acoustically Transparent Duct technology has been built and
tested on a centrifugal fan testbench at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Measurements
have been carried out on the test setup using a planar phased microphone array as
well as a radial phased microphone array by colleagues from the Budapest University
of Technology and Economics. The data has been processed using the ROSI beamforming
method and the Segmented ROSI beamforming method. The investigation presents sample
data for each approach and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each. It
is shown that the beamforming investigation of a centrifugal test bench can successfully
be carried utilizing this technology, with each approach having its advantages and
disadvantages.
