INVESTIGATION ON CENTRIFUGAL SLURRY PUMP PERFORMANCE WITH VARIATION OF OPERATING SPEED

In this paper three-dimensional fluid flow behavior of centrifugal slurry pump has been studied using commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code FLUENT at design and off-design conditions. Steady state simulation with Moving Reference Frame (MRF) model is used to consider impeller-volute interaction. Different turbulence models namely, standard k- , RSM, k- and RNG k- are applied for simulation of flow through the pump, which show reasonably close prediction of head –flow characteristics of pump by kmodel. Performance characteristics of the pump is numerically predicted at four different operating speeds namely 1000 rpm, 1150 rpm, 1300 rpm and 1450 rpm with water. The numerical results are compared with the experimental measurements. The comparison indicates that the specific head, specific power and efficiency characteristics prediction are within an error band of 5 %. Simulation results showed that standard affinity relations are applicable to the slurry pump also.

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