EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY OF A RADIAL FLOW PUMP IMPELLER WITH 2D-CURVED BLADES

The present paper describes an experimental and numerical investigation of a radial flow pump impeller with 2D curvature blade geometry. Investigation of the behavior of the above impeller for a wide flow rate range and for various rotational speeds was carried out and the obtained experimental results were validated with available measurements of the same impeller within spiral casing. The flow field through the impeller was also simulated by a 2-dimensional approach. For the numerical simulation, the viscous Navier- Stokes equations are solved with the control volume approach and the k-e turbulence model. The flow domain is discretized with a polar, unstructured, Cartesian mesh that covers a periodically symmetric section of the impeller. Advanced numerical techniques for adaptive grid refinement and for the partially blocked cells are also implemented at the irregular boundaries of the blades. The numerical results are compared to the measurements, showing good agreement and encouraging the extension of the developed computation methodology for performance prediction and for design optimization of such impeller geometries.