In the current study, the flow behavior in an axial pump through changing the number of impeller blades is analyzed. Due to the number of blades being very important geometrical parameters in the pump, the study of the influence of various numbers of blades on flow and pressure pulsation in the pump is carried out using the computational fluid dynamics technique. The sliding mesh with the standard turbulence k-ε model is used to investigate the unsteady flow with several flows and impeller blades. Pump performance prediction results with available experimental data indicate reasonable and good agreement with each other. Static pressure, shear stress, and different velocity compounds are qualitatively analyzed. Moreover, the fluctuation pressure and average pressure under different operating conditions and impeller blades are quantitatively investigated. The numerical results show that the impeller blade has a high impact on pressure, shear stress, magnitude velocity, axial velocity, radial velocity, tangential velocity, and average pressure. Furthermore, this numerical study provides good and useful information for the hydraulic design of axial pumps.
K E Y W O R D Saverage pressure, axial flow pump, number of impeller blade, pressure fluctuation, shear stress, static pressure