Development of High-Efficient Centrifugal Pump Through Optimization of Its Volute Tongue and Expeller Vane

Abstract

Centrifugal pumps are often used for pumping liquids from one priority area to another, which require to work effectively in terms of performance and reliability. The objective of this study is enhancing the hydraulic performance and reliability of a centrifugal pump based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) optimization. The shapes of expeller vane and volute tongue were optimized based on the following six design parameters; outer diameter, exit angle, front and rear heights, back sidewall gap, and tongue angle. The hydraulic efficiency and axial thrust were chosen as the optimization objectives. In this sense, a design of experiment (DOE) technique was utilized to generate 45 design samples. A response surface modeling (RSM) approach was employed to investigate the interaction between the parameters and objectives. The accuracy of the numerical simulation was verified by the experimental data and showed a good agreement. The optimization was found to improve the hydraulic efficiency by 2.92%, whereas the axial thrust was decreased by 7.51%.

Integrated aerodynamic optimization for stationary components of squirrel cage fan Considering impeller-Volute interaction

“…It results in the significant decrease in recirculated flow coefficient at most impeller heights (Figure 14b), which is corresponding to the increase of the airflow discharged from the volute and the reduction of energy loss. The advantage of modifying volute parameters has also been confirmed in the previous studies by Lun et al 26 and Mohammedali et al 27 . They found that a reasonable volute tongue radius and distance between the impeller outlet and volute can restrain the circulation of partial airflow and reduce the adverse phenomena.…”