BioHazard Fan Blade Design

thingiverse

The prototype model of the ZDF "BioHazard" fan blade design. This version is designed to be used as a replacement blade for the Noctua NF-A12x25, as seen in S2E4 of Major Hardware's Fan Showdown series on YouTube (Jan 9, 2021). When I originally started working on this design, I did not expect much in terms of performance due to the fact that I was basically creating a fan designed to look like something that isn't a fan. After seeing the design tested in "Fan Showdown", it was to my surprise that the BioHazard somehow managed to finish first out of the four designs which were featured in the episode. The performance specs (as tested by Major Hardware) are as follows: RPM: 1889 CFM: 43.05 NOISE 44.6dBA Needless to say, it's definitely not the quietest or most high-flowing fan design out there, but the compromise on performance was more minimal than I would have expected. I should also mention that my approach to creating this prototype was design-based and not engineering-based, so when it came to details like leading edge angle, trailing edge angle, curvature, etc... I just went with whatever I thought looked about right. That being said, I am pretty much certain that there are a number of tweaks that can be made to help optimize the performance of this particular fan blade design. I am currently planning to run some simulations on a few variations of this design to get an idea for what sort of numbers might be expected with slight differences to blade angles, widths, curvature, etc... I also plan on making a fan shroud with an adjustable frequency flashing LED strip to make it possible to see the shape of the blades while the fan is spinning. I have ordered some parts already, but it may take a month or so before I am able to test it since the parts are shipping from overseas. I don't have a specific schedule for when I plan on publishing an update, but I decided to make the original version available here for those who would like to print it themselves. I'd love to see some photos if anyone decides to use these for a custom PC build!