3th WCSET-2014 at Nepal
Mechanical Engineering / Sustainable Energy Session:
Title:
CFD Analysis of a Regenerative Pump for Performance
Enhancement
Authors:
K. Vasudeva Karanth, N. Yagnesh Sharma
Abstract:
Regenerative centrifugal pumps (RCP) are the subject of
increased interest in industry as these pumps produce
less noise, have low specific speed and are compact but
capable of delivering high heads with stable performance
characteristics. The regenerative flow pumps are
essentially rotodynamic turbo machines capable of
developing high pressure ratios within a single stage.
This paper presents the approach of Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) for simulating and analyzing the flow
field within a regenerative pump and validation study of
the CFD results with the experimental work. Several
numerical models were analyzed in the study for
performance improvement. It is observed that for
configurations having greater number of impeller blades,
static pressure developed by the pump, increased
significantly and vice versa, and when compared to that
of the original model. For configurations with splitter
vanes introduced near the vicinity of the outlet flow
domain of the pump, the performance of the pump
increased to a greater extent due to reduction in the
large recirculation zone which occurs near the exit flow
path, as compared to the original model.
Keywords: Regenerative
pump, Recirculation zone. Splitter vanes, Flow field
Pages:
344-349