Aerodynamic enhancements to the dust control cannons of FRUTIGER Company AG

Aerodynamic Enhancements

Between 2018 and 2019 the team led by Prof. Leonardo Manfriani developed several aerodynamic enhancements to the dust control cannons of FRUTIGER Company AG. The cone, the rotor blades, the stators, the motor fairing and the spinner were aerodynamically optimized. The performance, efficiency and noise emissions of the cannons was measured and compared to competitor products with a specifically designed measurement setup.

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"The collaboration with ZHAW points to a broadly based scientific and technical knowledge coupled with a pragmatic approach. We were optimally assisted by Prof. Leonardo Manfriani and Michael Ammann."

Urs Frutiger, President & CEO FRUTIGER Company AG

Project Description

In a first step we developed and built a specific setup to perform field measurements of the cannon performance and the flow field uniformity. Different FRUTIGER models were measured together with competitors’ designs.

In a second step, we optimized the cone, the rotor blades, the stators, the motor fairing and the spinner with the help of computational methods. Together with the customer we identified a compromise between best theoretical performance and producibility.

In a third step we performed field measurements of the new, aerodynamically improved product line with respect to performance, flow field uniformity and noise. The results were very positive and confirmed that the development goals had been reached or exceeded.

The new cannons were presented at the Bauma 2019 exhibition in Munich (the world’s most important trade fair for construction machinery)