Design Centrifugal Pump Impeller Blades with a Singularity Method

• 1、Department of Fluid Machines, Lanzhou Technological University

Abstract：The singularity method has been extensively applied into a analysis (direct problem) the potential flow through centrifugal pump impellers, but it is much less utilized in the inverse design (inverse problem) for such impeller blades. As a result of this, a singularity method was proposed in this paper for inversely designing impeller blades. A cubic Bezier curve was established to express mathematically bound vortex intensity density function along the blade camber so as to get a smooth and loading carefully controlled blade. The angle of attack and blade loading factor were taken into account in a given bound vortex intensity density function. A typical experimental centrifugal pump impeller blade was redesigned as an inverse problem. Furthermore, the three-dimensional turbulent viscous flows inside the original and redesigned impellers were calculated numerically by means of a CFD code Fluent. It was shown that the numerical algorithm proposed in the method is converged for a well-posed bound vortex intensity density profile. The blade shape and flow pattern on the blade can be controlled easily by altering such a profile. The CFD outcomes confirmed that the original impeller hydraulic efficiency was improved by 5% at the design duty.

Keywords： centrifugal pump singularity method impeller blade inverse problem CFD