Fan Calculator

Welcome to the fan calculator — or CFM calculator. Here, we will help you calculate the mass flow rate and CFM of a given fan. We will introduce you to the mass flow rate equation and explain what CFM is and what the abbreviation CFM stands for (hint: Cubit Feet per Minute).

We made sure that no fan feels excluded, whether it's the humble battery power fan, ceiling fan, or outdoor fan. We will talk about why fans are useful, what kinds of fans there are, and where you can expect to find them.

As a bonus, we have also included some fan facts that we think will allow you to have fun playing with fans.

If you have made it through the Internet all the way to this CFM calculator, we don't think we have to tell you that a fan is a rotating circle segmented into blades in such a way that when it rotates, it moves air from one side of the circle to the other. But for those who wanted a definition, there it is.

Starting from the beginning, we find mostly the cooling effect that a fan produces due to the air circulation. This is very well known for those of you who live in warm climates. Having a fan blasting air to your face can make you feel colder as if the temperature had actually dropped. In fact, the temperature doesn't drop, but only the way you perceive it changes. This effect is similar to that of the wind chill, and has to do with the following things, amongst other factors:

• Cooling laws;
• Thermal conductivity;
• Heat loss; and
• Specific heat.

Because fans move air and help circulate it, they also support getting a uniform temperature within a confined space, like a room. There are many types of fans. From the personal USB fan you can attach to your computer to the ceiling fans you can find in big rooms or even those huge fans in ventilation systems designed to cool and move air for entire buildings. Fans can come in many sizes and forms.

You can also use the wind chill calculator if your fan can do better than the forces of nature!

Regarding what types of fans we expect to find in each place, we should start with the obvious: most fans exist in hot places and closed spaces. For ventilation purposes, fans tend to be ugly and big but powerful and optimized for performance rather than silence. Because they are generally hidden they barely ever serve any aesthetic purpose. On the other hand, ceiling fans tend to be quiet since, apart from the obvious function of moving air, they should not disturb people having conversations under them. Finally, they should, at the very least, not detract from the appearance of the room they are located in.

We also have bathroom fans which could fall into the ventilation category since bathroom fans are barely ever meant to be seen. The best known are outdoor and standing fans like the ones you would pull out on a hot summer day in the hope of a refreshing breeze. They strike a balance between mass flow rate (don't fret, we will explain later what it is) and noise. They are also available in a wide variety of designs, sizes, and prices. Here we can include computer fans easily, both the fans used to cool it and the USB or battery-powered fans that cool you.

The last type of fans you can find are sports fans, but those are not very efficient at moving air and make a lot of noise. Hereafter we shall not discuss those types of fans.

Now that we have talked about the types of fans and their places, it's time to talk about the things that make one fan different from another.

• Size — Parametrized by the diameter of the circumference the fan covers.
• RPM — Revolutions Per Minute. The rotational speed of the fan.
• Blade shape — Depending on the design of the fan blade, a fan can be optimized for air pressure or airflow.
• Power — It measures the power produced/consumed by a fan (respectively called power output/input)
• Efficiency — Is the ratio between power input and power output expressed as a number between 0 and 1.

This distinction between airflow or pressure optimization of a fan is important in some aspects but is also very hard to parametrize, which is why it's left out of this fan CFM calculator. The idea is that an airflow-optimized fan will be better for moving significant amounts of air in an unrestricted scenario, i.e., when there's nothing close to the fan that may obstruct the flow. On the other hand, pressure-optimized fans are designed for situations in which there is an object blocking the airflow like a radiator. Hence, higher pressure is required to avoid the flow of air being completely obstructed.

The way pressure is mentioned and used in the fan world is reasonably standard and does not call for the use of exotic units of measurement. However, when we are talking about airflow being a more complex quantity than pressure, there are certain remarks and special units that should be used. In particular, in the fan world , we use the term "mass flow rate" and a unit called cubic feet per minute (CFM). So let's take a closer look at these concepts before we start using the calculator.

The term "mass flow rate" refers to the amount of material that passes through the fan per unit time. The mass flow rate mathematical definition is: dm/dt which is the derivative of the mass with respect to time. The unit of measurement for the flow rate is CFM which stands for Cubic Feet per Minute. It might sound a bit strange since cubic feet as a unit of volume and not mass or weight. However, if we use the density of whatever substance is going through the fan, we can easily convert volume to mass.

This requires you to know one more piece of information about the medium in which the fan will operate. That's why SCFM exists. SCFM stands for standard CFM, and it's a measurement of CFM for a gas of fixed density. The premise is that the gas is in what chemists call standard conditions, which are a set of temperatures and pressures that are representatives of ordinary, everyday values. Generally, when people ask, "What does CFM mean?" they are usually asking about SCFM since that's the specification that fan manufacturers quote.

This fan calculator that we have made for fans of fans helps you to calculate the CFM value of a given fan if you know the pressure it creates and the power it uses. We have not mentioned the power used by a fan as a specification, but it relates to the dimensions and rotational speed of the fan. Power consumption is generally included in the electrical requirements. If it is not, you can always take the voltage and current at which the fan operates and estimate the power requirements. Hint: use our electrical power calculator if you need help.

Back to our CFM calculator, it has 3 different fields you can fill; but if you're able to fill the three of them, you don't really need this calculator, do you? We created this calculator for estimating the CFM of a fan, given the pressure it generates and the power output. For completeness, we have also included a technical section "Electrical properties" in which you can calculate the output power using the efficiency and the electrical parameters of the fan.

Let's say you just got a new fan, and you want to know the CFM of your new purchase, but the manufacturer does not give the specification on the box. So these are the steps you have to take to find out the CFM:

1. Look for the pressure specification provided by the manufacturer.
2. If you can find the power specification for the fan, skip the next two steps.
3. Find the voltage and amperage at which the fan operates.
4. Use the electrical properties section to calculate the power output using the voltage, current, and efficiency of the fan.
5. The CFM should appear calculated on the third field.

This is one of many uses we can think of for this calculator. However, you should feel free to use the calculator to obtain any other parameters of the fan that you might be missing. What this means is that if you know the airflow and pressure, you can calculate the power output of the fan and even the efficiency (assuming you know the operating voltage and current of the fan). Feel free to explore and use the fan calculator according to your needs.

You might be thinking that fans always work on air. And that's reasonable since most of the examples we've talked about (ceiling fans, bathroom fans, USB/battery-powered fans) work like that. But actually, water-fans are a thing. Think about the propellers on a boat. They are indeed indistinguishable from regular air fans. The reality is that they work on the same principles as everyday fans, namely the Bernoulli equation. What makes them different is the use of the third of Newton's law to move a boat instead of moving the air/water around them. A very creative way to use a fan.

Another clever use of fans is to use them in the opposite way of how they are designed to work. Instead of moving the blades of the fan electrically, you let the moving air spin the fan and take advantage of that situation. This is exactly how wind turbines and dams generate electricity. You just need to put in the right electrical circuit. To correctly predict the viability of these infrastructures, you need engineering knowledge well beyond what is CFM or the mass flow rate equation, obviously.

However, if you resign from the electrical circuit and instead have a fan spinning freely as the air moves through it, you just made yourself a wind speed measuring device. And the best part is that you don't even need the answer to the question, "what does CFM mean". Simply put an outdoor fan wherever you wish to control the wind speed and look at it. The faster it spins, the faster the wind is, and the higher the CFM is at that moment.

You can even do it by yourself with one of these fans if you wish to do so. A quick search on Google will help you. We hope you learned something fun with our fan calculator. We don't know about you, but we think that this is the most fantastic of all Omni Calculator's calculators.