CFD Analysis of Centrifugal Pump with Various Blade Outlet Angle Hangling Viscous Fluids

M R Arul Muthu Kumaran

Abstract: Centrifugal pumps are extensively used in industrial machinery for the transfer of various viscous fluids to the required head. It is well known fact that blade outlet angle have significant effects on the performance of the pump, hence it is important to predict the effective blade outlet angle for the various viscous fluids. In this article, centrifugal pump is studied by differing blade exit angle of 20, 25, 30, 40 and keeping other some governing parameter like pump outlet, number of blades, blade thickness, wall roughness to be constant. The working viscous fluid chosen to be are diesel (C10H22) whose viscosity is 0.0024 kg/m-s and fuel-oil (C19H30) whose viscosity is 0.048 kg/m-s. The influence of viscosity and its turbulence effects on the flow patterns of fluids are studied separately with various blade angle and its effects on the impeller, efficiency, head and hydraulic loss are determined using CFD tool ANSYS Fluent17.2. The results obtained shows that flow separation is the main reason for the hydraulic losses across the blades as the blade outlet angle increases. Even the though head increases as the blade outlet angle increases, the decrease in efficiency can be observed when pump handles viscous fluids. The blade angle between 22- 25 is well suited for handling diesel and fuel oil without a significant loss in the efficiency.

Keywords: centrifugal pump, blade exit angle, CFD