The purpose of this paper is to present optimization method of an inducer blade shape to improve its suction performance and clarify the relationship between pump performance and design parameters. In order to conduct the optimization process a response surface based optimization framework was established. Baseline was designed in previous research [1]. The inducers were 3Dprinted in ABS plastic and their wetted and cavitating characteristics were measured. It was confirmed that the optimized inducer can maintain its wetted performance at lower cavitation numbers. A response surface is a mathematical model that approximates the relationship between the input parameters and the objective function from a finite number of learning points within the design space. The design space was defined by four parameters: sweep angle, sweep radius, incidence angle and blade solidity at the tip that controlled the blade shape. The performance of each design was evaluated with a CFD simulation established in a commercial solver. The optimization goal was to minimize the critical cavitation number that corresponds to a 5% drop of pressure increase through the pump due to cavitation. A starting point of the optimization was the industrial pump designed by a Japanese company Teral [1]. The results of the numerical optimization show that the critical cavitation number was decreased by 17.6% with respect to the baseline design. In the experimental results, an average improvement of 15.4% was achieved.

In order to improve suction performance, centrifugal pumps with an inducer are used for rocket pumps, liquid gas transport such as LNG, and general-purpose pumps. Since a higher suction performance than conventional pump is required, a splitter blade that consists of a long blade and a short blade is sometimes adopted. However, the design becomes more difficult due to the increased number of parameters. The stable operation over a wide flow rate range are required in the general-purpose pumps. Therefore it is necessary to design them so that unstable flow phenomena such as surges do not occur. However, the design method to avoid them is not well understood yet. In this study, we focused on the splitter blade impeller in a general-purpose low-speed centrifugal pump with an inducer. Six parameters such as leading edge position and trailing edge position of the short blade for both hub-side and tip-side were set as design ones. A multi-objective optimization method using a commercial software was applied to improve suction performance while maintaining high efficiency. Then obtained optimal shape were analyzed by CFD calculation and extracted the feature. Furthermore, optimized impellers were manufactured and confirmed the performance over a wide flow rate range by experiments. In addition, a optimizing design method that improves pump performance at lower cost was studied.