The flow simulation of a low-specific-speed high-speed centrifugal pump. (English) Zbl 1202.76109

Jafarzadeh, B.; Hajari, A.; Alishahi, M. M.; Akbari, M. H.

Appl. Math. Modelling 35, No. 1, 242-249 (2011).

Summary: A general three-dimensional simulation of turbulent fluid flow is presented to predict velocity and pressure fields for a centrifugal pump. A commercial CFD code was used to solve the governing equations of the flow field. In order to study the most suitable turbulence model, three known turbulence models of standard \(k-\epsilon \), RNG and RSM were applied. The complex flow configuration required us to use around 5,800,000 cells, and 12 computational nodes (processors) for parallel computing. Simulation results in the form of characteristic curves were compared with available experimental data, and an acceptable agreement was obtained. Additionally, effect of number of blades on the efficiency of pump was studied. The number of blades was changed from 5 to 7. The results show that the impeller with 7 blades has the highest head coefficient. Finally, it was observed also that the position of blades with respect to the tongue of volute has great effect on the start of the separation. Thus, to analyze the effect of blade number on the characteristics of the pump, the position of blade and tongue should be similar to each other. Investigations of this kind may help to reduce the required experimental work for the development and design of such devices.

MSC:

76M25

Other numerical methods (fluid mechanics) (MSC2010)

Keywords:

centrifugal pump; turbulence modeling; CFD; inducer

References:

[1]	Hornsby, C., CFD - driving pump design forward, World Pumps, 2002, 18-22 (2002)
[2]	Cao, S.; Peng, G.; Yu, Z., Hydrodynamic design of rotodynamic pump impeller for multiphase pumping by combined approach of inverse design and CFD analysis, ASME Trans. J. Fluids Eng., 127, 330-338 (2005)
[3]	Muggli, F. A.; Holbein, P., CFD calculation of a mixed flow pump characteristic from shutoff to maximum flow, ASME Trans. J. Fluids Eng., 124, 798-802 (2002)
[4]	Asuaje, M.; Bakir, F.; Kouidri, S.; Rey, R., Inverse design method for centrifugal impellers and comparison with numerical simulation tools, Int. J. Comput. Fluid Dyn., 18, 2, 101-110 (2004) · Zbl 1063.76637
[5]	Guleren, K. M.; Pinarbasi, A., Numerical simulation of the stalled flow within a vaned centrifugal pump, J. Mech. Eng. Sci., 218, 425-435 (2004)
[6]	Asuaje, M.; Bakir, F.; Kouidri, S.; Kenyery, F.; Rey, R., Numerical modelization of the flow in centrifugal pump: volute influence in velocity and pressure fields, Int. J. Rotat. Mach., 3, 244-255 (2005)
[7]	Cui, Boaling; Zhu, Zuchao; Zhang, Jianci; Chen, Ying, The flow simulation and experimental study of low-specific-speed high-speed complex centrifugal impellers, Chin. J. Chem. Eng., 14, 4, 435-441 (2006)
[10]	Versteeg, H. K.; Malalasekera, W., An Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics (1995), Prentice Hall: Prentice Hall Loughborough
[11]	Patankar, S. V., Numerical Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow (1980), Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, Taylor & Francis Group: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, Taylor & Francis Group New York · Zbl 0595.76001
[12]	Karrasik, I. J.; Krutzsch, W. C.; Fraser, W. H.; Messina, J. P., Pump Handbook (2003), McGraw Hill: McGraw Hill New York
[13]	Schlichting, H., Boundary Layer Theory (1999), McGraw Hill: McGraw Hill New York