CFD Analysis of Centrifugal Pump

Abstract

The Prediction of uid ow behavior in the centrifugal pump with the help of compu-tational uid dynamics is required for better performance and cost-eective design.All theoretical methods for prediction of eciency merely give a value; but one isunable to determine the root cause for the poor performance. Flow analysis of cen-trifugal pump is often a challenging task as it requires analysis of the highly complexow which is turbulent in nature and having continuously changing cross sectionalarea.In recent years, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become an important toolfor the ow analysis in centrifugal pumps due to the development of the high speedcomputers and evolution of CFD. Dierent investigators applied CFD as a numericalsimulation tool for centrifugal pump like cavitation analysis, prediction of part loadperformance, ow visualization in dierent components of the pump, micro pumpanalysis, pump as turbine.In the present study introduction of pump, various losses occurring in the pump arediscussed. Literature review on ow analysis of centrifugal pump carried out usingCFD as a numerical simulation tool is presented. Moreover, fundamentals of CFDare described. The methodology adopted for creation of geometric model of pumpusing GAMBIT, a preprocessor of FLUENT software is presented.Velocity and pres-sure contours and velocity vectors are plotted with the help of the software. Theeciency, head and power with the dierent models and dierent operating condi-tions were found. And also its comparison with the model testing is exposed. Themethodology to improve the eciency and the performance of the pump is also dis-cussed.